


44. The Thief Who Became a Disciple

by cognomen, MayGlenn



Series: In The Hands of Destiny [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Flirting, Bad Pick-Up Lines, Bathing/Washing, Chirrut is a little shit, Chirrut takes in strays, Destiny? I've been expecting your call, First Kiss, Flirting, Gen, Holy Relics, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Mercenaries, Monks, Philosophy, References to Buddhism, Religious Discussion, Slow Burn, Still, Thievery, bathing together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-09-25 14:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9824495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn
Summary: A hand lashed out and caught the man's fingers as they came near enough to catch, hanging on with a tight desperation and only half an idea why. Baze wasn’t going to be robbed before he died, at least. They could take the wallet from his corpse.He got his head off the ground to glare warningly at the stranger—and it was dark, and his vision was doing funny things, and his consciousness wasn’t going to hold out much longer, but as surely as Baze had eventually recognized the city, he placed the person sitting over him.“You,” Baze managed, but his voice wouldn’t co-operate for anything more, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.Chirrut gaped—would have marveled longer, but—"Private Malbus?" he asked, feeling very stupid that he had let fear cloud his sense of the Force, that he hadn't known until now it was him. Now a different kind of panic gripped Chirrut. "Y-you're going to be okay. I'm going to get you out of here."





	1. Chapter 1

Baze didn’t remember Jedha until he was down in the streets of the city, maze-like and lined with buildings that have seen more things in their lifetimes than any five men could expect to. He had been to many planets over the course of his career with the Republic military, most of which he could no longer name. He’d been to dozens more since beginning his career as a for-hire muscle.

At least he got to pick his jobs, now.

He knew his group was here to steal something, and he also knew his wallet was nearly empty and he couldn’t afford to be picky. They seemed willing to pay, they had a plan, and he was only required to keep their means of escape free. It meant standing around and trying to avoid notice, while heavily armed—not outside the norm for Baze. He’d found a good place to take cover, and he was watching the street mostly with a set of augmented goggles tucked down over his eyes, keeping an eye out for any signs of law enforcement.

Somewhere between his first settling in and the appearance of the crowds along the streets, he realized he’d been on the planet before. That there was—a temple here? With a start, he realized the bracelet was still on his wrist, under the sleeve of his jacket—now much more worn and dirty,and joined by half a dozen other such bands in leather or string. A comb, too. In one of the pouches at his hip.

It hadn’t changed, this frigid desert, the gritty sand still stung his nose and skin. The people in masks... Baze realized it must be five years exactly since he’d last been here— _This is, what had that monk called it?_ _Bodhi day?_

He didn’t have time to reflect on it. Even as the colored flags went up, a commotion raised behind him, and he realized the people he was standing guard for must have completed their heist—he hadn’t asked for details, and he hadn’t given any about himself.

“Did you get it?” he asked, over his comm—it sounded like they were running in his direction. Baze lifted the goggles off his eyes, and onto his head.

“Yeah,” the voice that answered was strained. “I got it. Where are you?”

“Under cover,” Baze answered, starting to lift himself up out of the stack of crates he’d hidden behind to cover their retreat. “I’m where you left m—”

He didn’t finish; the shots went unnoticed under the commotion of the crowd, the flashes of muzzle fire hidden under all the rest of the celebration as it tore across the space and into Baze’s unprotected back; enough times to send him flat out on the dirty cobbles of the street, still mostly hidden behind the boxes.

“That’s one less share,” his betrayer told him, kicking Baze’s dropped blaster away from him and into the gutter where the next storm would wash it away. He left Baze coughing and angry, sprawled where no one would find him until it was too late and if he could get breath to call for help—the sound would be lost under the noise of the celebration.

The Galactic Republic was now the Galactic Empire, and Chirrut hadn't been able to see his family in years, travel was so hard to and from Jedha. He had sent holos, of course, but now his sister had _three_ children and it just wasn't fair he couldn't see them. They had bigger problems, like the Empire's increasing demands for kyber crystals. It was fine, you know, with no Jedi around anymore to need them, but—they were large orders, and the monks struggled to keep up. Chirrut wasn't afraid of hard work, but he didn't like mining all day to fuel Imperialistic pursuits.

He hadn't forgotten his Destiny, Private Malbus—but he had, well, had _other_ things to think about since then. Like why the masters of the temple were willing to negotiate with the Empire's demands like this, why everyone just rolled over and _accepted_ an Empire, for that matter. An _Empire_!

Chirrut was dragging his feet and tapping his stick as he made his way back to the Temple. He wouldn't stay for Bodhi day today. He was too tired, and the festival just wasn't what it used to be.

He was making his way up the stairs when some shots rang out. Not...entirely out of the ordinary—the Holy City was a lawless place these days—but it was his job as a Temple Guardian to keep peace where he could. Also, he could sense a presence...

Someone was here. In this dirty alleyway, breathing—panting, really.

"Hello?" he called, bristling for a fight.

Time seemed to stretch for Baze; he was aware that he was _bleeding_ , that he was in a lot of pain, but it took him a long time to realize what the events of the last few moments had been. That damn double-crossing son of a bantha-shit had _shot_ him, and it was a lot. Enough times that he felt like all the air had been punched out of him and he realized that the pain was currently too much to process.

His breath wheezed in, he closed his eyes and tried to find his thoughts—Baze was _dizzy_ , and he couldn’t seem to breathe—had someone called him? _Was it the afterlife?_

“Here,” he managed, his voice rougher than even usual. It seemed to drag a cough out of him to even attempt to use it, leaving him wincing and gasping and then wincing _because_ he was gasping and it was just Baze Malbus’ luck to die here on this frozen rock that he hated while the rest of the planet had a party.

“Here,” he managed again, softer. He was fairly sure his blood was freezing shortly after it left his body—the pool he was lying in felt frigid.

Chirrut froze. The voice sounded in pain, short on air, helpless. Two meters ahead and on the ground. He could smell blood.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, and used the second 'Here' to locate the man, tapping gently with his staff until he felt a body, and dropped to his knees and patted him down. "Okay, easy, friend. I'm going to help you."

Baze wanted to answer, but all he could manage was another fit of coughing, and then to meter his breath into a thin trickle while the other man began to pat him down brusquely—it _hurt_! Was he going to steal Baze’s wallet on top of everything else?

Shit, this guy was bleeding everywhere. He was a big man, and his entire back was riddled with—not blaster wounds but _slugs_. How barbaric. The poor man. Chirrut shrugged off his outer robe and laid it over the man's back, feeling down his legs and arms for other injury.

A hand lashed out and caught Chirrut’s fingers as they came near enough to catch, hanging on with a tight desperation and only half an idea why. He wasn’t going to be robbed before he died, at least. They could take the wallet from his corpse.  

He got his head off the ground to glare warningly at the stranger—and it was dark, and his vision was doing funny things, and his consciousness wasn’t going to hold out much longer, but as surely as Baze had eventually recognized the city, he placed the person sitting over him, even as the bracelet on his wrist brushed against Chirrut’s trapped hand.

“You,” Baze managed, but his voice wouldn’t co-operate for anything more, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

Chirrut gaped—would have marveled longer, but—

"Private Malbus?" he asked, feeling very stupid that he had let fear cloud his sense of the Force, that he hadn't known until now it was him. He was even wearing that bracelet, with a kyber crystal on it, still. Now a different kind of panic gripped Chirrut. "Y-you're going to be okay. I'm going to get you out of here."

“—Not ‘private’ anymore,” Baze managed, because he’d be damned if they put that on his tombstone. On second thought, they probably wouldn’t give him one.

No time for first aid here. Chirrut reached under the man to tie his robe as tightly about his middle as he could—fabulous, and found at least one exit wound in his shoulder, _shit_ . Chirrut didn't want to take him to the infirmary—they wouldn't turn him away, but they wouldn't let him _stay_ , not some mercenary. They'd patch him up and send him away...and, well, okay, Chirrut would just sneak him into his room, then. _Yes, infirmary, then sneak him into my rooms. Good plan. The Force is with me._

"This is going to hurt," Chirrut said, and in two motions, heaved the larger man across his shoulders into a fireman carry, pressing the exit wound hard against his shoulder to stop the flow of blood.

It probably would have, and Baze began to groan, especially when Chirrut drove his shoulder into the wound in his front, except that all of that was too much. The pressure dropped out, and Baze lost consciousness before he could be impressed that the seemingly smaller—and blind!—monk could carry him through the streets.

By the time they made it to the temple, Baze was shivering, unconscious, breathing only weakly, and cool to the touch. But the impact with the cot that Chirrut laid him on brought him out of it a little. Enough to protest the cold—and the fact that everything seemed dim and it was   _spinning_.

"Sister Alussa," Chirrut panted. "He's hurt."

"Chirrut! What are you doing bringing a merc in here?!" Alussa cried, but rushed to his side. She had learned to trust Chirrut. "By the Force, Chirrut, what—happened?"

"I don't know. Found him like this. He was shot. Um. A lot? Tell me what to do."

"Help me roll him onto his side," she said, since there were wounds on both sides to deal with, and she moved Chirrut's hands under hers. "Keep pressure here. Does he have a name?"

"Malbus. His name is Malbus," Chirrut said, too worried to feel her smile:

"Chirrut, is that _your—_ "

"Will you just help him?!"

"Yes, we just need to stop the bleeding," she said, cutting him out of damaged  armor and filthy clothes with a quick knife.

“Okay, Malbus, if you can hear me, I need you to relax. You're going to be okay. He's going to be okay, Chirrut," she said, kind of glad Chirrut couldn't see her face.

The results were a fright; but they were new enough wounds that perhaps there was still hope—at least, Sister Alussa thought, he hadn’t lain in the street for days like the men she sometimes got. It was a dangerous place out there these days, and the Guardians didn’t always get there in time.

She studied the injuries: _bad_. He’d do better if she put him into bacta as soon as possible, and she’d have to hope that what they had would be enough—they had to filter theirs and use it two or three times usually before a new shipment could be arranged from one of the core worlds.

She patched a few holes with temporary bacta patches, and fretted about the ones that seemed to have no exit wounds.

“Are all of these with a slug thrower? What a barbaric—” she cursed, taking a quick check of his vitals; he was cold, he’d lost a lot of blood.

“Help me get him into the bacta tank,” she said, beginning to hoist their protesting patient, though Chirrut did most of the work. “We’ll have to let his body do some of the work before we even dare do anything else—ugh, he needs a haircut.”

She strapped the mask over his face and the mess of his hair as best as possible while Chirrut supported him, so that their patient wouldn’t drown in the bacta. For a moment, Alussa wondered if that wouldn’t be kinder. Then they both lowered him in, and she leaned back, listening to the indicators pick up the man’s vitals, and discovering that her hands were _covered_ in his blood.

Chirrut could smell all the blood. "I know we don't have any units of blood just lying around," he said, loathe to release the man into the tank. "But any chance we have the same type?"

" _Any_ chance," Alussa huffed. "Is this your Destiny, or isn’t he?"

She analyzed the mercenary's blood, and then sighed. Chirrut smiled.

"Okay, pull up your sleeve and sit down. You ate today?"

"Of course I ate today. It's Bodhi day. There were kebabs in the square," Chirrut said. "And I brought you falafel. It's in my pouch."

Alussa smiled. "Good," she said, warning him before sticking him with a needle. "You know he can't...stay here, for long, right?"

Chirrut nodded. "I know. Just til he's on his feet." Though he was sure the man didn't have anywhere to go.

"You don't need to leave your hand in the tank," she said. "It's probably better if you don't, actually."

Chirrut smiled sheepishly, slipping his hand free. "I want him to know I'm here."

She washed her hands in the basin, and then came back and carefully washed Chirrut’s hands, certain to get all the blood off. After all—a mercenary, an unknown medical history... Destiny or not, there were matters that were just good sense.

“He’ll know you were here when he wakes up and he isn’t dead,” she assured Chirrut, finishing. “Your robes will need a good wash, too, brother. I wouldn’t let Master Sidhava see you like that—not that you ever were any good at hiding it when you’re up to something.”

She checked the machines again, making sure the readings were steadying out, that Chirrut wasn’t giving blood too fast, that the healing process was beginning, and then she made a few adjustments, and sat down. She’d had a quiet night until now—Nan-in had come in with a splinter, and exploited the chance to flirt—but after this she felt exhausted.

“Where did you find him? Do you think there’s something dangerous happening out there?” she asked, putting the rag she’d cleaned Chirrut’s hands with in the trash with a good toss. Chirrut reached for her hand and squeezed it companionably.

"No more than is normal these days. I found him just outside the walls, actually. By the back steps." He sighed, felt Alussa remove the needle from his arm and seal it.

"Thank you," he said. "I'll—I don't care who sees me like this. Maybe I'll just stay here." He was suddenly tired. Maybe Destiny was exhausting, or giving that much blood was. Maybe _worrying_ was tiring. Chirrut didn't often worry about much, but he was all twisted up inside over whether Malbus would be all right.

“Oh no, don’t go to sleep right away,” she said, springing back into action to bring him some sweet fruit juice and something salty to eat. “You finish that, first, and tell me if you feel dizzy or sick. After that, I know you’ll want to borrow a cot—and who am I to keep you away from your Force-given destiny?”

Chirrut smiled softly. "Thanks. Alussa, I owe you twelve more falafels. I'll _make_ you falafels," he said, and dutifully sipped his juice.

“Your falafels would be terrifying,” Alussa told him, teasing.

He felt better after this, and picked up his usual chatter again, reminding Alussa how they had met ("Chirrut, yes, you've told me,") and how tall and handsome he was ("Yes, I can see him" "Oh, good, he is handsome, then? I wasn't sure,") and how he would probably hide him in his cell for a few weeks until the mercenary was strong enough to move on ("And maybe he never will?" "One can hope."). He undressed down to his underwear, and Alussa sent the clothes to be washed, and gave Chirrut a simple tunic to wear.

"Falafels. All the falafels," he promised.

"I have yet to see one—oh, there they are. Hey, one of them didn't even break!" she exclaimed, nibbling on the treat. "Here, Chirrut, to your left. Cot. Lie down. You really must be tired," she marveled.

"I've had a...busy day. Fought off his attackers..." But Chirrut laid down, and yawned.

"Now I _know_ you're lying."

She gathered up the discarded clothes , intending on throwing them out—there was really no saving any of it, since she’d had to cut most of it off. The boots, probably. But a weight stopped her—there was a belt, a few things in the pockets—a tool kit for a blaster repair, a few other things. And a pouch that obviously had some things in it, which she didn’t go through.

“Here, these are his things,” She said, tucking them onto the cot next to Chirrut. “You’d better keep an eye on them or all the busy-bodies here will be into them before you can blin—before you even know it. You can fight _them_ off.”

"Yes, thank you," Chirrut said, clutching the small pouch to him. It seemed very light. No money, obviously. He sniffed it. "Is it bloody?" It was hard to tell with the smell of blood lingering on everything.

Alussa took it back briefly. "No. Do you want me to open it?"

"I—yes. Please," Chirrut said, and waited.

"Baubles, mostly? What a sentimental—are we sure he's a merc?"

"He didn't like where the Republic was going. He used to be a soldier."

"Sure he didn't lose his job on account of you?" She teased. "There's ident in here. First name is—"

"Don't tell me. I want him to tell me." Chirrut smiled, confident.

"Also there's a comb? Looks like from one of the shops here. Doesn't look like he's had time to use it yet, though."

Chirrut lifted his head. "Is he wearing a bracelet, too?"

"You mean your story is true?" Alussa laughed, and she peered into the tank. "Yes, he is."

"Good."

“Several, actually, but I can see the one you meant,” she said. “A sentimental mercenary, and they shot him in the back...”

When she was certain that everything was okay—well, was at least _stable_ for this stage of the process—she tucked a blanket over Chirrut and went to do some other work. After a period of a few hours, she had to lift Baze partway out of the bacta, and then send in the surgical droids—very old models that made her a little nervous for this particular task - to clean up the rest.

They pulled out three slugs: two passed through, two remained. Seven times, and Alussa hopes that the bacta has enough kick left to at least take care of most of the internal damage. If they were on a good world, with a good supply...well, Chirrut’s destiny would be a little more certain, anyway. She just has to hope that the bacta will get him to a point where complications from healing the old fashioned way are unlikely.

She returned Baze to the tank for two hours  while Chirrut slept—she hadn’t woken him up for the surgery, figuring all he could do was fuss and distract her—and then the bacta gel that filled the tank is no longer effective. She hoped no other major injuries would come in while she cultivated the emergency colony into a usable batch and put in the order that would take a few weeks to get there.

For Chirrut, it was worth it. She did wake him to help her get the mercenary all the way out, but it was morning by then. They got him dry—he was pretty solid, actually. Broad-shouldered. She was a little surprised that Chirrut liked that, but then again he’d been unable to let go of the idea since it first occurred to him.

“Here, help me put him down on the table. We’ll have to hope the internal stuff’s really and truly done,” she said. “I’d have liked another couple hours. The rest, we’re going to have to sew. You remember how?”

"You worried I'll poke my eye out?" Chirrut asked, running gentle fingertips over the man's back to get his bearings and, wow, take advantage of the opportunity to map out his muscles. _Hello_.

"Ugh his chest is a mess. We have some skin grafts, but they're the cheap kind. Won't look right when they heal."

"Oh good. If he looks hideous then I won't have to fight anyone for his affections." Chirrut said, but then wrinkled his nose. "Okay, that was callous." He sighed, found a hole in the mercenary’s  back, and started stitching.

“Just try to keep his stitches straight,” Alussa chuckled—it was the sort of grim humor they both needed while working on something this complicated. “He’ll be grateful if the knot scars don’t spell your name, either.”

"You're assuming a badass bantha-fucking merc won't want a lightning scar? I mean that's kind of rude," Chirrut pointed out, laughing, but he did his best to keep his work small.

For a while, they both worked in silence. Alussa did her best to prepare the wounded areas on his front—shoulder, and side, high and low. Whoever shot him wanted him dead. Wouldn’t they be unhappy...

She had to rough up the skin there a little bit for adhesion, not that it wasn’t already pretty rough, and then she applied the patches, making sure to anchor them absolutely perfectly. After all, she didn’t have any spares, and if either didn’t take, they’d be in worse trouble than ‘won’t look right’.

“I mean, other than this, he looks pretty good for a soldier,” she said, to make idle chatter. “Not... I mean, not the way you mean. I mean, not a lot of scars.”

"He's not any older than me," Chirrut offered. "And probably less of an idiot than me. He shouldn't have too many."

She wrapped his shoulder up first, since Chirrut had stitched the entry-wound on the other side, placing bacta pads on either side and then bandage around both and sitting back to flex her sore fingers while Chirrut finished on the other side.

“I guess he either was really lucky, or he didn’t see a lot of combat,” she said. “Which, thinking about it, is probably really lucky. I don’t think he’s one of those standard issue republic troopers. _Do_ they look like this? I don’t remember the same-ones looking like this.”

"Not a clone. Too tall for a clone. The voice is wrong, too," Chirrut said, with confidence.

She paused her stream of chatter to check her work. “How’s your side coming?”

"I think it's all right," he said, feeling across the stitched up scars. "Uh—you've sedated him, right?"

“Well, he was before the surgery happened, but I don’t want to do it again,” Alussa admitted. “His respiration is already pretty depressed. Besides, he seems pretty out of—”

But of course, saying something like that was like a siren call for trouble. Their patient sprang to life as Chirrut stuck the needle into him for the next stitch, surging up in confusion and pain as both his caretakers sprang to action to try and keep him in place before he did any further damage to himself.


	2. Chapter 2

“—Oooookay, I was wrong,” Alussa told Chirrut. “Keep him as still as possible, I’ll get a sedative.” 

"Whoa! Whoa, easy, friend," Chirrut said, gripping the man firmly by both shoulders to keep him still, ears and Force sense trained for any sudden movements. "You're okay. We're stitching you up. I need you to rest." He must have been very weak, because Chirrut barely had to exert any pressure to hold him down. "Did we not give him the blood?" 

"I figured we wait until he was done bleeding to do that. Had him on a saline drip, though."

“—Where?” Baze managed, but the cold hit him—it was practically freezing here, even though he was inside—at the same time he recognized the cloudy-blue eyes fixed on him and—the voice, too. He relaxed slowly, mostly because he had very little choice but to do so—even startling awake seemed to have cost him about all of the energy he had.

“I’m sorry about the pain,” Alussa said, trying to soothe him. “I thought you’d be out a little longer, but tough soldier types always surprise me...”

Baze could breathe better. It still  _ hurt _ , but he at least seemed to be able to fill his lungs up and none of that tight, pinching, airless sensation remained. He pulled in an experimental breath, swallowed—his mouth tasted like blood, too. “Not a soldier.”

“We know,” she assured him. 

“Don’t put me out,” Baze managed next, turning an entreating look on the monk holding him down— _ Chirrut _ , he still remembered.  _ And, blind _ he remembered, so the pleading look wouldn’t help. He didn’t want to be unconscious again; it was terrifyingly close to being dead. 

Chirrut wavered for all of three seconds; the man sounded actually afraid, and that struck something deep in Chirrut's soul where he  _ knew _ , he just  _ knew _ , that the Force was at work here. "Okay, okay. That's fine. Isn't that fine, Sister Alussa?"

"Umm..."

"It's going to hurt, but you're not worried about that, are you?" The question was rhetorical: it went unanswered.

"But be still, all right?" he said, hands wandering up his shoulder to his neck and into his hair—a motion with no practical purpose except to calm him. "You're safe here. Alussa, can I have some water?" 

Alussa, putting the needle away with a sigh, grabbed a pouch and tossed it to Chirrut—as a test—his hand shot out to catch it with that eerie accuracy of his—but if he was  _ on _ enough to catch a container of water, he could keep this man from growing belligerent.

“I can... get a topical,” she offered, thinking fast. “It will make it feel a little less like you’re a pincushion, at least. I’m sorry, there’s still some work to do on your back.”

There was a clear moment where Baze tried to decide if he really  _ could _ trust them, if he really should was another matter. His eyes were wild, and maybe Chirrut couldn’t see it but Alussa could—and how something in them changed and eased as Chirrut’s hand went over the back of his neck and didn’t hurt him. It could have been a coincidence—just that he came to his decision at the same moment.

“I don’t think you really want to endure all that poking without at least a little something,” she said, soothing. “You’ve got plenty of bad times waiting for you anyway, I’m afraid.”

“Alright,” Baze agreed, and she gathered up the thick white paste that would numb his skin for a little while so she could finish stitching. When she crouched next to Chirrut, she decided he was definitely getting better at sewing.

“Well, Chirrut, that’s a lot better than the first pair of socks you had to fix, that’s for sure,” she told her friend. 

"I'll have you know my needlepoint is without fault," Chirrut shot back playfully, "It's too small to be seen with your eyes, but I've already embroidered several commemorative scenes from the history of our Temple. I was going to do Bodhi day next."

He smiled brightly, feeling tense muscles relax underneath him. 

"Here, can you try a few sips of water?" he asked, opening the package one-handed and guiding it to the man's lips—well—chin, first, but he corrected, and helped him lift his head to he didn't pull any stitches. "We're almost done, and then we'll let you rest."

“That’s what I meant,” Alussa agreed, hoping to keep their patient at ease by talking normally, reassuring him that everything was going to be okay just by continuing on as if it was okay, nothing was out of hand, everything was normal. “You were just supposed to sew up the heel, but instead you stitched a big picture - who decorates a  _ sock _ ?”

She smeared white paste over the last two holes—Chirrut had already done the other five, and she was grateful. Her hands were getting a little sore.  Then she threaded a needle while she waited for the effect to take. 

“No one ever sees socks anyway,” she finished, getting back to work.

Baze drank, closing his eyes, shifting only a little—not in protest, this time, but to take some of the pressure off the sore areas of his body. He barely remembered what had happened; his mind felt cloudy, hazy with all the pain, but the water felt cool—almost _ too _ cold—and sweet, and he drank the pouch dry without requiring any coaxing. 

"Good, that's good," Chirrut encouraged, setting the empty pouch aside, running fingertips down Malbus' back to find the next wound. One more each, if he counted right. "I've got the rest, Sister. You've been up all night," he said gently. 

"Yeah...my shift is almost over." 

Chirrut could feel her frowning as he stitched the last wound. 

"So, uh, Master Taia is coming in after Prime." 

"Damn. She's kind of a bitch," Chirrut muttered. "Think we can move him?"

"Uhh...I think we'd better  _ try _ ?"

“Get me up on my feet,” Baze said, valiantly. “I’ll walk.”

“That’s very noble, but if you fall on your face, it’s just more work for us,” Alussa argued, but Malbus was already sitting up, and Chirrut seemed content to help control his ascent rather than do the sensible thing and insist they should carry him on a stretcher or something.

“There’s an empty room up the hall that no one’s lived in for a while,” Alussa sighed. “There’s a couple cots in it, still. And you’ll be near the infirmary so you can sneak supplies out. She’ll be so mad when she finds out I’ve run her out of bacta...”

Between the two of them, and Baze determinedly setting his feet one in front of the other—he seemed unaware that all he had for modesty was a very loosely draped blanket, or he didn’t care. Very soldierly. They got him into the empty room, and laid out flat on a cot.

“Keep him warm, but make sure he doesn’t start to run a fever,” Alussa said, slumping in the doorway—she really  _ was _ tired. “Make sure you change those bacta pads every few hours or if they start to show red through. I mean bleed through.. Don’t feed him anything for a little while, just water—there’s still a good amount of sedative in him and I hate to think what throwing up would do to all that work we just did.”

She took a deep breath and looked down at their hopeless project on the cot, and she had to say at the very least, she liked her odds better now.

“I better go clean up before Master Taia sees what a mess there is,” she said. “If anything changes in a way you don’t like, come get me. Wake me up if you have to. Especially if any of the wounds start to—well, just come get me if you aren’t sure.”

Alussa hesitated for a moment longer, and then smiled, wickedly. “And maybe you shouldn’t mention to him just yet that his payment for us saving his life is to serve the Guardians for the rest of his lifetime...”

“What?” Baze managed.

"Oh, I'm not worried. He's got an appointment with Destiny, I told him so last time," Chirrut laughed, embracing and kissing Sister Alussa. "And I'd help you clean up, but..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Funny how your blindness only matters when there's hard work to be done." Alussa laughed, covering her mouth. "Okay. I'm leaving. I'll tell Nan-in where you are if I see him." 

"Thank you, Sister." 

Now they were alone, and Chirrut could feel and hear the poor man shivering pathetically.

"All right. You're safe here. You'd have been safe in there, too—Taia is just strict, not cruel. Anyway," he said, feeling about until he found a blanket, and draped it carefully over the man, and knelt by his head. "I'm sorry it's not very comfortable. I can fetch more blankets and a pillow. I think you could lie on your back now, if you want. I'll just move you when it's time to change your bandages." 

Baze didn’t bother to argue that he wanted to lie on his back about as much as he wanted to lie on a bed of needles, he just caught his breath and settled onto his front, still feeling taxed from the walk here. There were  _ fewer _ holes in his front, anyway. He was pretty sure—he didn’t really want to look, because if he could lie to himself that it wasn’t that bad he might be able to believe it.Chirrut laughed as he felt his way down to make sure his feet were covered. "Are you really hanging off the edge of this thing?"

“Not a very big cot,” Baze managed, pulling the blanket a little higher on his shoulders. “Do you really  _ not _ hang off of it?”

He coughed a little—that hurt—and then groaned and pushed his face into the mattress so he didn’t have to look at anything. He felt distant still, but there was a lot of pain. He could tell it was going to be worse when all the painkillers finally wore off, but it felt important to be honest at the moment.

“I think my backstabbing partner,” he managed, in one breath, his voice getting rougher before he had to pull in air again— _ ouch! _ He finished, “might have robbed your temple.” 

Chirrut sat up straight. 

"Shit, really?" His mind raced. "Maybe I'll just pretend you didn't say that. Or there'll be more questions." He sighed, laid a hand on the man's brow. 

"You kept the bracelet. And the comb. And you came back to me on our anniversary," he pointed out cheerfully. "If a few statues are all we have to pay for a new Guardian as big and strong as you...I'm kidding."

“I never thought,” Baze answered, voice interrupted at odd intervals by his shortness of breath, but at least he seemed lucid. “I’d ever need the comb. I had short...hair when you gave it to me. Who gives...a hairbrush to...a soldier?”

This statement worked through, Baze had to catch his breath again. Taking too deep of a breath was really painful, so he tried to keep to shallow, even breaths—small motions that didn’t pull all the stitches he could feel in his back. 

“Well, you didn’t even use it when you grew your hair long, so good question,” Chirrut teased. When Baze shuddered again, Chirrut got to his feet. “Okay I'm going to fetch another blanket. Will you be okay for a few minutes?”

“Bring two,” Baze suggested. He hadn’t considered this to be anything like an anniversary, but arguing seemed like it was more effort than it was worth right now. “I’ll try not to... die in the interim.” 

"You  _ won't _ die," Chirrut could promise with confidence. "Not before me," he said, and left before the sudden accompanying emotion could overwhelm him. He locked the door, worried about someone discovering him more than he worried about Malbus trying to escape, and pushed a hand across his eyes before orienting himself. Why had he suddenly felt—?

"Master Îmwe." 

_ Shit _ . Master Sidhava.

"Where are your robes?" He asked, like Chirrut was wandering around in his underwear rather than a perfectly conservative under tunic.

"Oh dear, again? How embarrassing, Master, I apologize. I honestly  _ thought  _ this was my robe when I put it on, and I—"

"Just go get something on," he sighed, and Chirrut kept his grin on the inside as he scampered politely away. 

Chirrut made quick work of getting clothes, enough for himself and Malbus ("Sorry, Nan-in," he muttered to his absent roommate who was much taller than him),  _ three _ blankets, two pillows, and plenty of water before returning.

As Chirrut stepped back into the room, Baze turned his head to look at him, as if to prove he was still alive—and only then realized that was a pretty foolish thing to do. It was easy to forget, given that the monk seemed to get around just fine. And he’d come back with blankets, as promised. 

“I didn’t die,” Baze assured instead, feeling better rapidly once the blankets were laid over his back, tucked in under him. The planet seemed really intent on freezing him solid. He hesitated, folding his arms under his head, resting his cheek against them and feeling the series of bracelets beneath it, and looked up at his unlikely savior.

"Of course you didn't die," Chirrut said, stamping his stave into the ground to punctuate his words. "Alussa is a professional. And I'm a very good embroiderer."

Young, Baze realized—probably about his age. Baze wasn’t sure why he’d originally thought younger; maybe because it felt like the actions of a younger man, a braver man, to wrestle the blaster rifle away from Baze those years ago. Like someone the universe hadn’t taught to be afraid yet. It meant—if Baze thought the monk was young, that  _ he _ still had to be, even though he hadn’t felt that way in a long time. It was a little unnerving the way Chirrut’s eyes never quite settled on him, but they were kind anyway somehow, and his smile wasn’t exactly the sort of perfect smile you’d quite call handsome. It wasn’t very certain of itself, like Chirrut wasn’t sure if he was moving his face the right way.

Baze was charmed instantly.

“Thank you,” he managed. “Chirrut, right?” 

He grinned again, relaxing somewhat as Malbus managed to sound more alert. He eased onto his knees and slid a pillow under Malbus' cheek. 

"You know, if I knew you would really never  _ use _ the comb, I might have thought of another gift," he said lightly, scrubbing a hand through the wiry hairs.

“It wasn’t long enough,” Baze answered, accepting the familiar contact as a necessity—after all, it wasn’t like he wouldn’t need his bandages changed, or any number of other things. He rested his cheek on the pillow that he was given, and felt more comfortable.Even if his legs were hanging off the cot from his shins down, at least the rest of him was supported.

“Now, I think it’s too coarse,” he continued. “Sorry, it’ll be a while before I can get a haircut.” 

"Nonsense," said Chirrut, though to which statement Baze couldn't be sure. He patted the floor until he found the pouch, and in it, the comb.

"Let me know if I hurt you," he said, and proceeded to comb out the tangled locks, patient enough to coax them loose. 

"What color is the comb?" he asked. "Is it a nice color? You'll have to give me more than names, of course. Red and blue mean very little to me." 

It was...soothing sitting here with Malbus, under the haze of pain the poor man was in. He had a calming, centering presence about him, or else Chirrut's anxious desire to know what was going on around him, to understand the swirling of the future in the Force, was fulfilled in him.

Any pulling was a minor, distracting sensation that was almost a relief in comparison to the deeper, sharper pain every time he breathed. It was almost relaxing—like when he’d been really little and his mother had roughly brushed his hair as part of the morning lineup. 

“It’s a simple color,” Baze said. It was instinctive to just reach for the simplest descriptive word. “It’s blue, but—”

He took a deep breath. “Anything I can compare it to is something you won’t have seen. But it’s like the sky before the moon comes up. Shiny, too. Or it was, before I kept it in my bag for years.”

Chirrut smiled. He liked colors—mainly liked what they told him about the people who described them to him. He ran his fingers over the comb. 

"It ought to be polished. Wouldn't want it to splinter in your hair." He finished with Malbus' hair and set the comb aside to polish later. 

"Shallow breaths," he coached, as the next wave of pain was tangible. "I could see if we could get a breathing unit. Not sure we—"

A deep rumbling gong was struck, calling all the monks to a meeting. "Blast. I bet it's about your friends," he grumbled, jumping to his feet. "You rest. We'll cover for you."

“Not my friends,” Baze protested, as Chirrut got up. “Didn’t even pay me.”

But he seemed exhausted—not frail, at least, just tired. It would take a lot of sleep to get him back up to speed, and after that...well, one step at a time. First he had to heal. He could probably only manage that if the Guardians of the Whills didn’t put him out on the street again now that he wasn’t actively bleeding to death.

Nan-in greeted Chirrut on his way to the temple hall; most meetings were called there—a large, austere space that happened to be the only one that they could all fit in, even if there were considerably fewer Guardians than there had been in the past.

“You aren’t wearing your robes again,” Nan-in said, exasperated. “And all my blankets are gone. What kind of night did you  _ have _ out there?”

"Damn it," Chirrut said, having completely forgotten. 

"His Destiny is back, give him a break," Alussa said, sounding tired, but probably better dressed than Chirrut. 

"Speaking of Mr. Destiny, let's not speak of him, maybe?" Chirrut tried. "Even if they announce something...strange?" 

Alussa and Nan-in were exchanging a look. There was a certain way silence got about them. But they both sighed. "Fine. You owe us, Îmwe." 

"Already do." 

"Shush," said one of the novices, a bit of a goody-two-shoes whom Chirrut quite liked.

“Alright, but let’s try it this way,” Nan-in said, pulling his outer robe off his shoulders and slinging it over Chirrut’s. “He’s less likely to be mad at me for it, since I was supposed to be working in the garden..”

“Shh!” the novice repeated, as Master Sidhava stepped in to the front of the space, accompanied by two other senior monks, sending the whole murmuring hall into quiet as they wait to hear his announcement.

“Brothers and Sisters, I have bad news,” Sidhava announced, sounding tired and grave. “Several artifacts have gone missing from the vault. Not just ceremonial objects, but historical items.”

“I knew he was hiding lightsabers in there,” Nan-in said, elbowing Alussa a little. 

“I understand that there was quite a commotion last night,” Sidhava continued. “But I need to know if anyone has heard anything, or knows how the thieves got past our defenses.”

Silence. Chirrut could feel Alussa glaring at him, but she said nothing. He had the best friends, really. 

A monk piped up about a commotion in the north entrance, which was a relief. Malbus had been found nowhere near there. But no useful information was got out of anyone, and they were soon dismissed again. 

"What  _ happened _ ?" Nan-in hissed, pushing Chirrut against a wall, and then thinking better of it and taking his robe back. 

"I think he was with the thieves, but they double-crossed him and shot him in the back," Chirrut admitted. "So he wasn't really part of this, and wouldn't be able to tell us anything."

"Where is he?" 

"He's recovering in a room by the healing wing," Alussa said. "How's he doing, by the way?" 

"He was lucid when I left," Chirrut answered. "So, better."

“I wish I knew what they took,” Alussa said, sighing. “I’d feel better if I knew what just went out into the world.”

“Are we going to have to tell the Empire?” Nan-in asked, getting his temper in check and letting Chirrut down, shrugging back into his own robe. “Only  _ your D _ estiny would rob the temple.”

“It’s not his fault, Nan-in,” Alussa said. “But maybe he knows their names, or the ship they came in on, Chirrut. I think we should try to find out if he knows any details that might help us catch the thieves.”

“Right? Then we could bust some heads!” Nan-in said, punching at the sky. “No one should get to steal from the Guardians and get away with it.” 

"Okay, okay," Chirrut agreed. "We can ask him. "Let's let him rest, though, huh? I'll ask him when he's a little more awake. When he has  _ eaten _ ." 

Alussa and Nan-in were satisfied by that, and Alussa was tired, so they let him go back to the room alone. 

"Hi," he whispered as he entered, in case Malbus was asleep, and locked the door before kneeling at his side. "You awake?"

Baze had been on the edge of sleep for a while, willing himself to sink down the rest of the way. It would feel better to sleep, but while he was able to doze, he couldn't quite get all the way to dreaming.

"Nearly awake," Baze said, as Chirrut checked his temperature. He wasn't shivering anymore, though he was in a pile of blankets so possibly only because of that. "Do I need to make a run for it?"

At the moment, he was regretting turning down the sedative, in all honesty. He had a chance to get back to himself, and he ached.

"No, no," Chirrut soothed, allowing himself to believe that his fingers were lingering because he was trying to map out Malbus' health rather than the shape of his face and body. "No, you're safe here. We might have questions for you when you're better. I don't even know what they took..." 

Chirrut shook his head. "Would you drink some water? Rethinking the sedative? I wish I could feed you something, but I'll fast with you and pray."

“I need to—” Baze began to confess, in rough soldier’s jargon, that he needed to empty his bladder; but his voice seemed to falter on ‘piss’ as his thoughts rerouted. It was a temple; that didn’t feel right. Using crude language in front of a monk. Normally, he might not care—but  _ this _ one had saved his life, and given how close he’d gotten to hell, or becoming one with the Force, or whatever happened to bad soldiers when they died...

“I need to use the toilet,” he said instead, taking as deep a breath as he could to gather himself up, pushing his arms and lifting as much as he could with the undamaged parts of his body—one shoulder was no good, and his legs felt like rubber, but he was going to have to do this several times a day at the least. “Before I drink anymore.”

"Hey, hey, stop that," Chirrut said, helping to ease Malbus into a sitting position without tearing any of their stitches. He was in such pain it actually made Chirrut's teeth hurt in sympathy, and Chirrut stayed close enough that the soldier could lean on him. He was trembling almost violently. "Of course, of course. We don't have much indoor plumbing, this being a thousand-year-old temple, so there'll be a chamber pot—ah, here," he said, fishing it out from under the bed. 

Baze started to leave the blankets behind, and only then seemed to realize he was naked. “Where are my clothes?”

Chirrut smiled. "Are you afraid I'll peek?" he wondered. "Your armor and shirt we had to cut off—they were full of holes, anyway.And we're trying to get your underwear and trousers through the laundry system without anyone discovering you. "I have some clothes for you to wear, though. The rest of your things are here, though. Your boots and—uh. Aren't they?" 

Chirrut had quite lost track of the pouch after taking the comb out of it.

“How do you live without running water?” Baze wondered, eying the chamber pot suspiciously—as if it might leap up and bite him. He realized it was silly to be shy around Chirrut, but he’d still only just met him, and it seemed inconsiderate to behave as if his lack of sight meant he didn’t deserve to be treated the same as Baze would any other person.

“It’s less about peeking and more,” Baze began, and then shrugged. He looked around the sparse room and discovered that his things were there; his boots and his pack-pouches were tucked away in a corner and it was probably all he owned in the world. “More comfortable to be wearing something.”

He couldn’t count the amount of times he’d had to get up and leave when there would have been no time to get dressed. He stood up, keeping one hand on the wall and moving away from the cot a little, and then found himself utterly incapable of releasing even one drop from his bladder. He glanced over his shoulder and found Chirrut still looking in his general direction, and felt, for a long moment, like a genuine idiot. Maybe Baze should have stayed on his back water planet and gotten a job herding nerfs.

"We have  _ aqueducts _ , friend, we're not  _ barbarians _ ," Chirrut laughed. "And we have toilets--kind of. This way means you don't have to leave the room, though.” 

“Can you stand outside for five minutes?”Baze asked, shoulders slumping under the one blanket he’d kept for warmth.  

Chirrut huffed. “Yes, I can leave the room if you want." He smiled and stood up. "If I hear anything like a crash or a cry, I'm coming back in, I don't care if it's midstream or whatever."

“I think I can manage,” Baze assured Chirrut. He could manage to stand up on his own for five minutes while covered in gunshot wounds, but not to pee with anyone in the room. Even he was aware of the ridiculous flavor of the situation. At least he managed not to pee on the floor once he had his privacy, though the thought of just keeping a pot around...

He put the cover back on and nudged it out of sight carefully with his foot, before he sat back down on the bed.

“Alright,” he raised his voice to let Chirrut know he could come back in, before he reached out and took one of the pouches of water and drank it without having to be told. He was  _ thirsty _ , though he felt a little loopy from the after-effects of whatever they’d used on him to keep him sedated. 

Chirrut had waited patiently outside, though he didn't see what difference there was in hearing piss hit the pot on this side of the door or the other. He swept in, found the pot without much trouble, and took it out to the nearest waste chute, and returned with a bowl of warm, scented water. "Sit back. There's some poppy in this water. I presume you're not allergic? It'll help with the pain and help you sleep," he said, kneeling in front of Malbus and washing his hands before blotting up his arms and chest, helping him to breathe in the fragrant plant.

“I’ve never—” Baze began, but Chirrut seemed certain that he wouldn’t be, and was already sponging it over him, letting him breathe in the steam and—where it touched, it left him numb, which was a blessing in a way, and the numbness began to seep into the rest of him. 

Chirrut smiled as Malbus began to physically, obviously relax, and he guided him onto his side. "I'm going to redress your wounds, all right? Don't go getting a fever on me."

“Where I’m from,” Baze revealed, because it seemed important to his suddenly drifting mind. “They only mix it with hemlock...”

"That's stupid," Chirrut said. "It's mostly nice, when used sparingly. I find it helps me meditate." He adjusted the pillow under Baze's neck, and added a second one under his arm. His limbs were loose and pliant, and when Chirrut ghosted a hand over his brow, his eyes were closed. "Yes, sleep. You're going to be all right." 

He seemed in no such danger here, but...it was strange to think about how kind Chirrut had been, for reasons that Baze couldn’t understand. He supposed—if this opium wasn’t laced with poison after all, he’d find out. Then he laid back and slept, because he couldn’t do anything else.

Chirrut sighed out when he felt Malbus' breath even out in sleep. He could leave the bowl steaming in the small room and return for a bit more opium sap, mix it with an alcohol and some other beneficial herbs, and apply it directly to the man's wounds. Malbus slept mostly easy throughout, and seemed to relax even further once Chirrut had finished and eased the blankets over him.

Satisfied that he had done all he could, Chirrut sat against the heavy wooden door and crossed his legs, squirming until he found a meditative pose. There was a window in the cell, high up, that let in sounds from outside—the festival cleanup. He said a prayer for Malbus, and for Bodhi day, and for Alussa and Nan-in, and a prayer for the stolen artifacts, and a prayer for the man who shot Malbus—he definitely wanted him to live long enough for Chirrut to meet him in a dark alleyway—which wasn't the sort of thing he was supposed to pray about, but he couldn't lie to the Force, so why bother trying? 

And then he slipped into a meditation so deep that all he heard for the next three hours was the heartbeat of the man lying in the cot across from him.


	3. Chapter 3

For most of the first day, Baze slept. He woke once, in the small hours of the morning and refused any more opium, but managed to drink the clear broth that Alussa said he could have when she snuck down to check on them before her shift. (Nan-in peered in around her shoulder but remained respectfully in the hall).

“His temperature is good,” she said, pressing another cup of hot broth into Chirrut’s hands, as well as some bread smuggled down from the kitchens. “Let him sleep as much as possible. Nan-in has some of our other brothers covering for you, in case one of the Masters comes looking.”

But the rest of the night had been uneventful, leaving Chirrut’s charge sleeping until late the next afternoon when he finally seemed to rouse and return mostly to himself, requiring another bout of privacy to relieve himself, and to pull on some of the clothes Chirrut had brought—his own still hadn’t returned. Nan-in’s trousers fit him at least, and he kept the blanket wrapped around his shoulders as he sat up, measuring his strength.

“Is he ready to talk now?” Nan-in asked, peeking his head in the door. He had a good sense for when things were about to get interesting, and a talent for appearing when he was least welcome. 

Baze rolled his eyes toward the newcomer tiredly, arching his eyebrows.

“Jeez, I expected bigger,” Nan-in observed, based on at least one of Chirrut’s past assessments. “I mean, for the type.”

“For  _ what _ type?” Baze asked. 

"Shut up, Nan-in, or you're not allowed in," Chirrut huffed, hoping Malbus couldn't see his flushing cheeks. The soldier was so completely his type it wasn't funny (except it was, because the Force was very clever like that). 

"You both are awful monks. And even worse at being secretive. Get in here!" Alussa hissed, and shut the door. 

"Malbus, this is Nan-in. He's my cellmate, and you're wearing his clothes," Chirrut said.

"Except for his generosity, he is otherwise obnoxious," he concluded, and the Force didn't allow him to see the smack aimed toward the back of his head, that time: "Ow!" 

"Anyway, this  _ isn't _ any kind of inquisition, Mercenary, we just hoped you might be able to tell us anything about whoever stole our Temple's artifacts. We know one of the great kyber statues was taken, as well as some smaller carvings from our relic room. Do you have any idea who the thieves were, what they wanted with them?" Alussa asked, sitting down. 

"It's only been two days now—we could still go after them," Nan-in put in.

Baze watched the exchange amongst friends and read a longstanding companionship between the three that made him comfortable. Alussa he remembered, and Nan-in, he tried to remember the name. He still didn’t know how they stood this freezing planet.

“I wasn’t hired to know what they were after,” Baze said, looking up. “But I’ll give you their names and everything else I know about them if you’ll let me come after them with you.”

After all, he had every reason to want to put any one of them that was still alive underground. Especially the bastard who’d shot him. Both Alussa and Nan-in looked at Chirrut for the answer, he noticed. 

Three heads reared back in shock—but they shouldn't have been surprised, really. 

"But you're in no condition to go anywhere, and they could be anywhere in the galaxy by the time you are!" Nan-in spluttered. 

"Anyway,  _ we _ weren't going to go anywhere, we were just going to alert the authorities..."

Nan-in scoffed. "Who wouldn't  _ do _ anything." 

Chirrut slammed his staff into the ground. 

"You have a deal," he said, smiling at a point just above Malbus' head. "I suppose you'll know where to find them in a week or so after you're on your feet?"

“I’ll be ready by then,” Baze promised, picking himself up off the cot, though he still refused to let go of the blanket. “I owe them something.”

“Yeah we do too,” Nan-in agreed, gently giving Alussa a punch in the arm. “And if we can get those artifacts back, the Masters won’t have to report this to the Empire.”

“The group’s called the Kath Hounds,” Baze revealed, “The plans were to meet up in a few days, and then get off-world after any clamor dies down. Until then, they plan to lay low; there’s tunnels beneath the city, not far from the market? I didn’t see where, exactly , but that’s where they’re supposed to be. If that bastard Dyl  didn’t kill everyone else, too.” 

"They're still on planet?" Chirrut asked, sounding, perhaps, a little too excited and bloodthirsty for a man of the Force. 

"What do they look like?" Alussa asked.

"Yeah, I can keep an eye out," Chirrut offered, grinning. He heard Alussa's eyes roll, but this time he dodged Nan-in's swat.

“There were four, besides me—” Baze began, before the monks cut back in.

"I mean just if we see them in the city."

"Or what was their cover?" Nan-in asked.

“Their cover was the festival,” Baze said, blandly. “You all wear masks. Bodhi day, right? Tourists come in for that from all over, right? Even to this frozen ball of rock...”

“Hey, buddy, we live here,” Nan-in protested 

“Plus, that’s not scientifically correct,” Alussa said. “It’s cold here but the temperature is not actually at the point where water freezes most of the time. Only in the winter.”

“Is this not winter?” Baze asked, pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders defensively.

“Offworlders,” Nan-in sighed.

"It's much warmer when you're high all the time," Chirrut continued, and Nan-in laughed. "Okay, fine, that was a joke." 

"We'll make sure your clothes are warm enough. Are you not warm enough now?" Alussa asked, reaching out to touch his forehead again. 

“With all the blankets,” Baze said, holding himself still against his instinct to flinch away—not because he expected her to hurt him, but because he’d been touched more times this last two days than he had since he’d joined the military.

"If Chirrut forgets to bring a candle or torch at night, you are allowed to yell at him. I've roomed with him for twelve years and he still forgets." 

"Not my job," Chirrut said. 

(This was an old argument.) 

"All right. I think that's enough excitement for our patient for today," Alussa said. "And if you can't promise to be less exciting, I won't let you stay in here copying all day," she said, withdrawing two scrolls of parchment. 

"Oh! Oh, Alussa, you're the best!" Chirrut said, taking the scrolls from her and using the close proximity to hug her.

“How do you copy...?” Baze began to ask, and then shook himself, sitting down on his cot again—they weren’t planning on going right now, so he should sit down and save his strength. 

“I’m going to bring a torch right now,” Nan-in said. “And the little heater from the baths, for your delicate offworlder constitution.”

Alussa herded him out ahead of herself, and he vanished up the hall while she returned Chirrut’s hug. “You owe me, brother. Next time I need a night off chores...”

"Of course," Chirrut replied. "Which scrolls did you bring me?" The covers were embossed, but it was just easier if she told him.

"Books Three and Four of the Luminosity tracts." 

Chirrut made a face. "You did that on purpose." 

"It's funny when you make mistakes." 

"I'll make Malbus read for me if I forget." 

"If he  _ can  _ read..." 

Chirrut scoffed.

"Of course he can—you can read, can't you?" Chirrut asked, sticking his head back in and shutting the door on her.

Baze watched the whole soap-opera play out with a strange feeling—almost a sort of longing for such normal everyday relationships. He’d had a few in the military, but not many, and he’d lost touch with them—and his family—in the years since. Before now, he hadn’t felt the loss.

Perhaps he just felt sappy from almost dying.

“Not in the dark,” Baze said, plainly, as Chirrut shut all the light out of the room from the hallway.

“Here you go,” Nan-in called from outside the door, barging in and setting down a little powered lantern and a heat-emitter that he wound up and turned on. “Oh, unless you wanted to huddle for heat like those old romance novels.”

"NAN-IN DEGORRA!!" Chirrut shouted, and pointed towards the door (well, at the wall, but the message was clear), mouth thinning into a line. 

Nan-in winked at Malbus, but he did leave, and shut the door behind him. 

"Sorry about him," Chirrut said, rolling the blank scroll out and taking the stylus from the center of the roll. "Can you tell me where the writing is stopped? Read me the last sentence?And do you need anything? How did the broth agree with you?"

Baze shifted closer to the little heater Nan-in brought in, trying to do so in as stealthy a manner as possible, but he had to look over Chirrut’s shoulder to see the scroll he’d spread out on the floor. 

“The last words are,” he said, reading the sentence to himself before he read it aloud. “In order to embrace the will of the Force I will forsake my worldly attachments and dedicate... myself to the science?...”

He paused, and then looked up at Chirrut. “Your handwriting isn’t great.”

Baze sat down on the floor next to Chirrut, arranging the lantern and heater nearby and leaning back against his cot and pulling open the book that Chirrut handed him. “What part were you on?”

"Hey, you're not supposed to be on the floor," Chirrut grumbled. "You know who's going to have to lift your ass back up into that cot? It's me." 

But after making a face—he wasn't strictly sure what kind of face it was, but he was  _ trying _ to look disapproving—he let it go. 

"I was on  _ line _ 372," Chirrut said. "I think. 'In order to embrace the will of the Force I will forsake my worldly attachments and dedicate myself to the science of ascetic living, eschewing all carnal pleasures, and—' Eugh. This is why I hate the Luminosity texts."

Chirrut screwed up his face, and felt the slight depressions of his pen until he felt where he stopped writing, and continued. "No sex, no good food, no fine clothes—that one's fine. I couldn't tell, anyway," he muttered as he 'copied' out the text from memory. 

“Why no good food?” Baze asked, rolling the scroll up and down until he located the line Chirrut referenced. “The rest sounds like standard monk stuff, but...”

His voice trailed while he located the line. “I don’t think you get closer to the Force when you’re starving.”

"What comes after 'supplemented by the Living Force'? Not that I should let you do this. You should be resting."

He checked down a few lines and then supplied the rest to Chirrut, “‘Within the living Force you find the answers to the present questions, and when there are no present questions...”

While Chirrut’s pen scratched the rest of the line out, Baze watched, arguing against being sent back to bed. “I am resting. It feels better to be awake for a little while. I can’t lay in bed forever—that definitely does not say ‘present’.” 

Chirrut glared—or cast a dark eye in Malbus' direction.

"Anyone who  _ knows _ the text will be able to read it," he said haughtily, but made a tick in the margin for the keepers of the texts to go back over it if they wanted to. He copied a little while longer before he was stuck again, and sat back. 

"The idea is you get closer to joining the Force, rather than being reborn again and again," he said, in answer to Malbus' earlier question. "The Force is in everything, so if you're wicked, you could come back as a bug, or a rock”. 

"The gentleman who shot you, for example. When I'm done with him, he's going to be rock at the bottom of a hole that people shit in all day," he said, with some satisfaction.

"Emperor Palpatine. Probably coming back as a cockroach."

“What does the Force expect you to learn as a bug or a rock if you don’t remember why you’re a bug or a rock?” Baze wondered, looking ahead in the book as if it were a novel; the end looked as dense as the page he was on. “By the time you get to him, I intend to have given him as many holes as he gave me. Does that mean I’ll be a rock?”

Chirrut frowned. "Maybe not. Killing for personal revenge is, like, toad level. Killing for a friend's honor, however, now we're getting into mammals. So if you let me kill him, Malbus, I might come back as a pittin, and you'd be fine."

Chirrut grinned, hoping Malbus knew he was pulling this entirely out of his ass.

“You know that’s my last name," Baze said, realizing it was the second time he’d been referred to by his surname—but at least it wasn’t ‘Private’ now. “I’m Baze.” 

As for the rest, it was an interesting theory, but Baze had never been particularly drawn to any religion. “And you’d best keep your dangerously anti-imperial sentiments quiet the next time they come to survey your temple.”

He paused, and then leaned a little closer, adding under his breath. “I think he’s already a cockroach.”

Chirrut laughed at that, joy trickling silvery down his spine at Malbus' easy teasing.

"Anti-Imperial thoughts are how I flirt with deserters who insult the Emperor outright," he said, sliding onto one hip so he was facing the soldier. "Is it working?"

Baze leaned back, genuinely surprised by Chirrut’s forwardness. He hadn’t expected that at all. Yet for a moment—for one tiny second, everything about this seemed right and natural, like a piece that had always belonged in his life that had just returned. Something that he’d expected to be there, but hadn’t been. It was such a strange, profound feeling that Baze couldn’t answer right away. But Chirrut was still looking toward him, waiting for some kind of answer.

It had been long enough that the silence had grown a little awkward. 

“You’re teasing me,” Baze realized. 

"Would I tease my Desti _ —wait _ wait go back, you have another name?" Chirrut cried, laughing and smacking his thigh. 

"Baze! That's much better. Though it took you long enough. Five years and two days to tell me your first name? I'm just glad it's not really 'Private.'" Chirrut laughed.

“A few other things were happening,” Baze reminded, and then the corner of his own mouth quirked up at the the glee Chirrut evinced at such a small detail. “You could have asked before now.”

"I wanted you to tell me, Baze Malbus." Good. The name felt complete now. "I'm Chirrut Îmwe, if I didn't say that before. Now I know your name. And you know mine." 

He sent a bright smile in Baze's direction. "But you're right. I shouldn't flirt with a captive audience, of course. That's not fair."

He returned to his copying, taking more care this time.

Then, there was that bright smile, and Baze felt a second moment of dazzled confusion. Flirting, romance, that sort of thing—he’d never even thought about it. Well, of course he’d thought about it—it was everywhere. You couldn’t watch a holo without a romantic plot in it, it seemed like. He just hadn’t thought about it in relation to himself.

Uncertain what to make of Chirrut aside from ‘baffling’, he went back to reading from the scroll, glad for the little heater to keep his fingers warm. He only prompted Chirrut when the other asked him to, but skimmed in the interim, because it was something to do with his eyes and his mind, and if he had to sit still and feel his body heal with no distraction he’d go mad. 

"I can get you more scrolls to read, if you like. Better stuff. Though, I'm  _ supposed _ to tell you,  all of them are good," Chirrut said after a long silence. "I suppose you'll be bored in bed all day." He very carefully didn't add anything suggestive to that, though he wanted to. 

“I plan on starting to do some exercise tomorrow,” Baze revealed; he did, after all, intend to help them hunt down his would-be murderer. Without his blaster, he wasn’t sure exactly what he could do, but the idea of perhaps squeezing the man’s neck until his face turned purple or his head popped off like one of his sisters’ dolls... “But having a distraction for when I can’t do that would be good.”

Chirrut stretched his arms above his head, unknotting his back. "And how's the pain level?"

Watching Chirrut stretch was a little bit like a guilty pleasure—Baze figured he was free to look all he liked if Chirrut was going to play around at flirting with him. That was how that worked, right? But it wasn’t the way you looked at a woman or anything (not that Baze looked at many of those, either)—it was more that every time Chirrut moved, Baze got a sense of how strong he really was. How solid his body must be under the robes—especially when the loose sleeves fell back and revealed some pretty powerful forearms and biceps. Chirrut had, after all, picked Baze up and carried him through the city. Baze was pretty sure he could do it again without it being an emergency.

He’d also been asked a question. “Not...good,” he admitted. “But not unbearable. The stitches itch.” 

Chirrut nodded. 

"They probably do. I could get a salve," he offered, "when I go fetch us something to eat for evening meal. Would you like a philosophical question to debate, to distract you?" 

This was how they played, and it was one of Chirrut’s favorite games. He was smiling faintly in Baze's direction, feeling the soldier's eyes on him, and he was basking in it, a little.

“I’m not a philosopher,” Baze said, suddenly embarrassed by his own actions and dropping his eyes away—of course Chirrut could tell, he could probably hear which way Baze’s head was pointing just from the way his voice sounded or something. But there was no sense sitting here like a lump. “I can’t promise I’ll make any kind of good debate, but I’ll try.”

After all, Chirrut had saved his life when it would have been just as easy—and probably much faster—just to let Baze freeze and bleed to death, in whatever order that had been about to happen. He could at least play along for this much. 

Chirrut rubbed his knees as he sat back, staring straight ahead. "The drive of sentients to seek power: learned or innate? Do all sentients desire to dominate others, and is it always morally and ethically wrong?" 

He turned to Baze again. "An important topic in these times."

Sitting back, Baze considered the depth and breadth of the question. “You don’t pull your punches.”

He was willing, however, to discuss it. He idly rubbed his chin with his left hand—when his right arm proved too sore for the thoughtful gesture, aching all the way up to the shoulder. “I think it’s a behavior that could be discarded, if a concerted effort were made...but an instinctive one.”

Baze stopped there, feeling uncertain. He’d never bothered to think about it before—some men had power, some men did not. “It seems like it’s been that way for so long it’s impossible to say you can separate where it came from.” 

"Agreed," Chirrut said, pleased by Baze's answer, though it was his duty as debater to pick at it. "Do only the strong, the cunning—those who can take it—possess power? Do they deserve what they have worked for?"

It didn’t get any easier; it wasn’t like a test where you got the answer right and the teacher checked it off and then you got a grade; or a drill where you demonstrated that you’d learned what you’d been taught. This was harder. Baze considered. “Deserving is a difficult thing to—to decide if someone else—does.”

He took a deep breath and came at it again. “I guess it depends what they do with that power.”

"So power itself is not the evil, and evil resides is in the person?" Chirrut asked. "So there is no truth to 'power corrupts'?"

He was drawing idly in the sandy floor—the lines of the Force arcing through Baze Malbus, and in his head at least, it was a handsome picture.

“Well,” Baze said, and then gave a nervous chuckle. “I’ve never had any, so I can’t answer that. I don’t think any one person, with power or without, is completely free of anything bad...”

He rubbed his face a little more and tried to relate the questions to his own experiences. “I guess—no one can get power alone. People have to agree to give it to you. If you use your power to—well that’s not right either.”

He scrubbed a hand over his whole face then. “It’s probably good I never had any. It’s hard to untangle doing good for the people who gave you power with what that might cost the people who didn’t give you power.” 

"It's all right," Chirrut found himself coaching, once Baze had trailed off and didn't seem as though he would begin again. 

"Take your time to gather your thoughts. I like your insights." Chirrut wiped his dusty hands off on his robes—Nan-in's robes.  _ Oops _ . 

"You say you have never had power. But you are strong, physically. A soldier, with authority. A mercenary, with weapons. These are power. What have you done with it?" he asked, the question at the same time academic and intimate.

“That’s—those are props, they aren’t really...” Baze started, and then stopped—Chirrut had a point, in a way. “Those put me at an advantage, but they didn’t give me power. Being strong doesn’t mean people have to listen to me. In fact, I had to listen to pretty much everyone else.”

He chuckled, “I can think of at least one instance where someone didn’t listen to me even though I had a blaster and I was bigger. So I guess, mostly, I did what I was told to do.”

"I should like to hear that story someday," Chirrut said with a smile. 

“You already know it,” Baze assured him. “You’re the star.”

Chirrut squawked and laughed, jumping to his feet and moving to sit on Baze's bed beside him. 

"You really shouldn't be sitting up this long, so lean on me," he said. “But please continue.”

Baze hadn’t spoken this much in a long time. It wasn’t required that he be chatty to sell his gun arm, or guard duties. Funny how he had never considered those things as giving him any power—power was for commanding officers or people with money. 

“What about you? You’re strong. What have you done with your power?” Baze turned the question around on Chirrut, if only to not be the only one talking.

"What indeed?" Chirrut responded. "I carry water and bear stones. I practice the Ten Thousand Forms and sass my superiors. I once snuck my sister—my actual sister—into the innermost hall that you have to be Ordained to see." 

Here his grin got huge, "I have more than once used my blindness to get something that I want. Mostly cutting line to get falafel. No one tells a blind man to wait his turn if it looks like an honest mistake."

“Duly  noted,” Baze said, considering all of that information. That seemed a lot more like power than guns or weapons—not the ability to manipulate others with the disadvantage they assigned him, but the power to keep control of his own life. 

He paused, and then felt his way forward with some amusement. “So would you say that your power has corrupted you, or is it the falafel?”

Chirrut cackled madly at this. "I am daily purging my personal corruption. So far it has not been too successful," he said. 

"I still cheat for falafel, so." He shrugged and sighed. "Well, I think we've exhausted that topic. Or anyway it got me into your bed without you noticing." 

He winked.

“I’m not sure we’re still talking about the same thing,” Baze said, relaxing his guard a little. Perhaps ‘audacious and flirtatious’ were just parts of Chirrut’s personality—after all, he was the same man who had bribed Baze with the promise of a gift on their first meeting and then carried through with it when he didn’t need to. 

“I noticed,” Baze said, without heat. He was tired now, even just from sitting up, and the room was warmer with the heater going, and he was sore and aching again now—but he felt better to have at least made an effort to sit up for a while. He laid back against the single pillow, leaving room for Chirrut—it seemed the companionable thing to do.

Philosophically, he asked, “What do you reincarnate as if you’re a bad monk?” 

"A bad mercenary," Chirrut said with a gentle smile. "Only joking." 

He helped Baze get comfortable as he laid down, somehow getting the pillows and blankets just where they needed to be (he could  _ feel _ when Baze was uncomfortable, though that didn't seem like the thing you told your Destiny when you only knew him a few days), and then he slid off the bed to sit on the floor again—giving the soldier his space. 

"No one knows. I think, genuinely, for the most part, sentients return as other sentients. If we're lucky, or good, the same souls manage to find each other again and again. Like true friends, and soulmates. That's the important part. We're all one in the Force, you know. And some souls find the Force through other souls."

Baze considered this, laying back, thinking about all that implied. It seemed like a lot to comprehend—a lot to worry about. He barely had time to think about where his next meal was going to come from, or the next, but a whole life devoted to just considering it... Well the result was Chirrut. 

“I don’t know,” Baze said at last. “That seems like a lot to take on faith. A lot to worry about—what if you make a mistake and don’t find them?”

Chirrut blinked rapidly. "Then you try again," he said, with some effort. "Hopefully you find them, though." 

He sighed again—new subject. "But don't listen to me. Attachments are not forbidden, but they can keep you from true oneness with the Force." Chirrut stood. "I will go get a salve for your pain, and some broth for your strength. Have you need of anything else?" he asked at the door, his back to Baze.

Baze wondered if that was wrong answer—he hadn’t expected Chirrut’s response to something he had thought was just a philosophical question. The monk changed tracks—and expressions—more rapidly than anyone else Baze had known. 

“No, thank you,” Baze said. He added, carefully. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I guess—I mean, thank you for saving my life.” 

Chirrut smiled—the kind of smile he smiled for himself, where it didn't matter what his face was doing for the benefit of the sighted. 

"You are welcome, Baze Malbus," he said, and he made himself leave before he could say something that would just sound creepy like 'No need to thank me for rescuing my soulmate!'

Not sure he could speak to Baze again soon without totally blowing it, Chirrut took the time to bathe and change his clothes before fetching the supplies. He would really have to think up an excuse if he couldn't go to prayers or do his chores tomorrow. He knew the Force would understand—the Masters, not so much. Also, he realized, he wasn't sure when he last slept. 

He returned to the cell with everything in a satchel slung over his arm and a cup of broth and noodles in each hand. "You awake?"

Baze had rested for a while, but found he wasn’t quite tired enough to sleep, so he’d picked up the smaller tome and begun to read it again. At first, the words just passed under his gaze, without penetrating. There seemed to be a lot of repetition, a lot of assertion of the same vague concepts and topics, referencing things that were probably covered in earlier texts that he didn’t understand, but then that one phrase that resonated—and Baze could begin to understand.

“Yes,” he answered, looking up as Chirrut came back, and he smiled—the food smelled good, and his appetite was returning. He was just as glad to see Chirrut. Then he realized he’d been monopolizing Chirrut’s time. “I should be able to fend for myself tomorrow, if I’m keeping you from your duties.” 

Chirrut shook his head so suddenly and violently that a bit of broth sloshed onto his hand and on the floor. 

"Oops. I mean, no, not at all. I can bring work in here, and duck out for prayers." He knelt beside Baze and held a bowl of soup towards him. "You're not keeping me from anything. I would only be worried about you if I weren’t here," he blurted out.

Baze took the soup quickly, but also Chirrut’s hand, setting the soup aside to check and make sure he hadn’t burned himself, extending his sleeve to wipe the hot broth away. It was instinctive, the urge to protect Chirrut, not because he was helpless or blind but just...because he didn’t seem as concerned with protecting himself.

“Alright,” Baze said, turning Baze’s pale hand over in his dark ones. “I just didn’t want you to get into trouble. Is your hand alright?” 

Chirrut was so stunned he almost dropped the other soup, but managed to set it down. Baze's hands were tender, after all, and so were his words. 

"I—I'm fine," he stammered, and could feel himself blushing, and he managed a smug smile to cover it up: 

"I'm very good at getting out of trouble. Don't worry about me," he said, even though he was seriously contemplating jumping out the nearest window just so Baze would worry about him again.

Turning his hand over a second time, as if a blister might suddenly appear, Baze satisfied himself to the fact that Chirrut was unharmed, and returned care of his hand to him, surprised by Chirrut’s blush. Was all that flirting in earnest after all? Baze wasn’t sure what to make of that. He was— _ cute _ —when he blushed. 

“Alright,” Baze said, picking up his soup. “You’re good at getting into trouble, too, though.” 

"Well, o-of course!" Chirrut laughed, stuttering only a little. "I can't be good at getting  _ out  _ of trouble if I don't have practice being  _ in  _ it."

He grinned and set his satchel down properly before sipping his soup. 

"I think I brought—I should have chopsticks," he said, rummaging in the satchel and finally unearthing a pair and holding them out to Baze. "Can you use your right arm well enough to eat?"

“I can manage,” Baze said, shaking his head at the image of a blind man attempting to feed him hot soup like a baby bird. He steadied the bowl with his right hand, the less difficult task, and worked the chopsticks with his left. He hadn’t seen—or used—them since he was a kid.  He lifted the bowl to his mouth first, and drained the broth. His body wanted the salt, craved it as part of the healing process, so he indulged it.

“I was reading your scroll,” he confessed, it seemed like a safe topic of conversation. “I’m not sure I understood all of it. Is there a place I should start? What's the 'Ten Thousand Forms'?"

"It's what you'll be doing to get your strength back," Chirrut answered, grateful for a topic that wouldn't make him blush. "But if you want to read, we have other texts. There are seven main treatises and nine secondary works about the Force and our relationship to it. The Jedi only followed three of them, and followed a very literal interpretation. We follow, or try to follow, all sixteen. And we believe it's less about following and more about understanding."

Chirrut stuffed his mouth with noodles. 

"I will bring you more scrolls tomorrow," he went on, cheeks full.

“Bring me an easy one,” Baze requested, earnestly. “I don’t know if I can do ten thousand of anything and then understand something complicated.”

He worked his noodles loose with his chopsticks, and lifted them to his mouth, also chewing. It felt good—he was hungry, when he thought about it. He finished the whole generous bowl, eating more quickly than it was probably polite to do, but he felt better afterward, even if he had to lay back. His body would shortly close down to digest all of that, probably sending Baze to sleep, but for now he was just full and content.

Chirrut thought that Baze was very sweet, in the way he ate heartily, gratefully, and stretched out afterwards. It felt good to know Baze felt good.

"None of them are easy. If they are easy, you are reading them too carnally." Chirrut said, reaching out to stack their dirty bowls to put away later. "But I will bring you the  _ good _ ones. Sister Alussa is always teasing me, making me work with the texts I don't like and don't know as well. Maybe I'm reading  _ them _ too carnally."

He gave Baze a cheerful smile, and reached out to touch his knee. 

“Will it be alright for me to do the forms, even if I’m not a monk?” Baze wondered. “It sounded like a fairly serious practice that required a lot of spiritual understanding...”

"Of course. You don't need to be a monk to have understanding. The forms flow from knowledge. How else do you suppose someone like me could learn them? Watching tutorials on the holonet?" Chirrut beamed: if  _ only _ .

Baze, still a little confused about how someone could read in a carnal fashion, supposed he’d find out if he really had the head for this. The thinking he’d done earlier on a subject he’d never really bothered to had been...well, exciting. It felt a little bit like reaching outside of himself for once. 

“I suppose someone could stand behind you and move your arms and legs,” Baze suggested,  though he found the whole image absurd. “If you’d let them. But something tells me you didn’t need that either, just to be told what it should feel like.” 

Chirrut found himself blushing again. 

"I might let  _ someone _ stand behind me and direct me, but it wouldn't be to learn the forms," he said. "But I only know a few thousand, so there'll be plenty of opportunities."

He laughed and pulled the blanket up over Baze, feeling him grow sleepy.

“Are there really ten thousand?” Baze wondered. “How do you keep track of them all?”

It seemed less important to worry about, as Baze drifted toward sleep. He could feel Chirrut’s presence in the room, and for once, the pain seemed to be shuffling over in order for him to relax and sleep. Something about Chirrut made that easier; he was high-strung and bold and Baze liked how free he was. 

He just wasn’t sure if he was willing to accept that maybe the Force had people that it wanted to meet. 

"Eh, it's a poetic exaggeration, I think," Chirrut said. "But I'll let you know when I get there."

He crept his fingertips over to Baze's head, and patted his hair gently. Baze's voice was nice, and the sound of his breathing, strained but no longer labored, was a good sound. His heartbeat, stronger this time, if slow, was a beat that seemed to ease Chirrut's very soul.


	4. Chapter 4

They weren’t out hunting for the thieves, really. Just doing their market-day chores. Nan-in was supposed to arrange for a fruit delivery, and Alussa had come along to keep him company (and make sure he didn’t get distracted by anything shiny). 

“No, Nan-in, the temple doesn’t need an entire crate of Corellian Bananas...” Alussa scolded.

“Think of the potassium,” Nan-in told her, gravely. She made a face at him, and finally, he conceded. “Alright, well, what about...”

He was beginning to look for whatever shiny object that next caught his eye when he saw a knockoff of one of the missing artifacts; he was about to point it out when he realized...maybe it was a little too close. 

“Alussa,” he said, voice going strange. He tried to play it cool, but of course he was staring right at the wares on the table. “Does that look familiar to you?” 

...

"Chirrut! Chirrut!" 

Chirrut heard the shouting from far off. He had been helping Baze to hobble around the small room to get his strength back, but now they were reading. They stopped at the sound of Alussa and Nan-in running down the hall toward them.

"What on earth?" Baze muttered, as Chirrut stepped outside. 

He was promptly bowled over and pushed back into the room by Alussa and Nan-in. "Chirrut! Chirrut, we found the thieves!" Alussa hissed.

"We saw them! They were in the market!" Nan-in cried, before he remembered to lower his voice. "They were trying to  _ sell _ the statues!" he squeaked. 

"We have to go after them before they try to move anything offworld!" 

"Baze. Baze you have to tell us everything, we have to move  _ now _ ." 

"Calm down, calm down," Chirrut said, but he was already girding up his robes and slipping on his boots. He might have been a bit grumpy because they had just gotten to the treatise on Love and Companionship and almost to the Soulmates part of the Sacred Texts, but never mind. "We should go when it's night. We'll have the advantage."

" _ You'll _ have the advantage," Nan-in muttered.

“Your  _ mom  _ will have the advantage,” Alussa retorted, to be immature, and then she laid a hand on Chirrut’s arm. “Just kidding, I think the world of your mom.” 

“He’s trying to sell it here?” Baze wondered, picking himself up off the bed—he was clearly sore and tender, but he refused to be left behind, pulling his boots on, and the outer layer of Nan-in’s spare robes, pulling them tight around his bandaged chest. “Something must have gone wrong, that wasn’t in any plan I heard.”

“Maybe he can’t get it off the planet?” Nan-in volunteered.

Baze grunted agreement. “It never was a very bright plan, I should have insisted on payment up front.”

He made to follow them, keeping one hand on the wall for stability, and his chin up. Both Alussa and Nan-in looked first at him, then at each other, and finally to Chirrut for leadership. 

“We should go now,” Baze said. “If he’s desperate enough to try to sell your artifacts in your own market, he’s probably at the end of his rope. I want to tie a knot in it and hang him with it.” 

"Uh, hang on," Chirrut said, placing both hands on Baze's chest. "No. You're staying here.  _ We _ are going. You will only pull stitches or kill yourself." 

Alussa nodded sternly. "We didn't have enough bacta to really put you back together properly, so what you need is  _ rest _ ," she told Baze. "I'm sorry."

"Can you tell us where to find them?" Nan-in asked.

“I’m coming with you,” Baze insisted, but he found only a wall of stubborn expressions, and he took a deep breath, and then let it out. He turned toward Chirrut, first, but sensed even an entreaty wouldn’t get him what he wanted; in fact, he might get locked in. There was a window, but it was small, and he didn’t want to trust his chances climbing out of it.

Finally, he sighed, and relented. “Yes, I’ll...”

He picked up a scrap of parchment, and drew a crude map; the intersection of two streets, and several buildings. “Their hideout is hidden in a series of underground...I don’t know what it used to be. The door is hidden behind a false wall right...here.”

He made an X, and then turned the paper over to Alussa.

“Oh,” she said. “Those are old dry cellars, I know where this is.” 

"Thank you, Baze Malbus," Chirrut said, the hand on his chest going up to grip the side of his neck and squeezing gently. It was almost a lover's touch, and then he was guiding Baze back to the cot, easing him down. "Thank you. We'll be back. How many were there?"

“There  _ were _ four,” Baze said. “I’d count on less, I only saw one come out of the tunnel again, and if he was willing to shoot me, loyalty isn’t high on his list.”

He hesitated—now Baze was worried for them; they were good people. Not like the Kath Hounds—these three had friendship and valued it. Something about the contact of Chirrut’s hand against his skin had struck something resonant in him. That urge to protect Chirrut, again. Strange.

“Just be careful,” Baze encouraged them. “They’re dangerous and if you back them into a corner...” 

"They won't know we're coming," Alussa said with confidence, and Nan-in nodded. 

Chirrut thumped his staff against the ground. 

"We will be careful. You and I have readings to finish," he said with a smile, and let his touch linger against Baze's arm for a second longer before Alussa and Nan-in ushered him out of the room. 

"Don't worry, friend, your Destiny is going to be fine for a few hours..."

When the door was shut behind them, Nan-in led the way back toward the marketplace, hurrying through the halls, though Alussa’s comment had him curious.

“So how has that worked out? Have you convinced him it’s destiny yet, or that it’s true love or something?” Nan-in asked. He paused, and then grinned. “Have you kissed him yet?”

“I’m not sure what you’d do if your destiny only liked women,” Alussa laughed, but she shook it off. “Don’t tease him, Nan-in.” 

"It doesn't have to include kissing," Chirrut said, though something sank in the pit of his stomach at that. "Or sex." 

That would be a true disappointment, but not insurmountable. "Soulmates are beyond that. You should be less carnal." 

"Chirrut, you brat," Nan-in laughed. 

Outside in the city, the three monks blended into the crowds. 

"Hey, you think if we get the statues back, they'll make us Guardians?" Nan-in wondered, but Alussa shushed him. 

"Here. This is the door, I think." She touched it—and looked around. "Chirrut should go first." 

"Oh, yeah. I can warn you about all the things I see," Chirrut replied. 

"I mean, you have the best reflexes and—oh, never mind," she said, and pushed the door open.

Inside it was dark; no real surprise; neither of Chirrut’s companions could see much until their eyes adjusted. The initial room seemed empty, smelled disused and dry. No sounds reached their ears as they slipped inside and let the door swing shut again behind them—it was on some kind of pulley system that kept it closed so it didn’t accidentally blow open.

Nan-in waited for his eyes to adjust, finding that there was at least a little light, and then the three of them began to search. 

“Wait,” Nan-in whispered, after they were pretty sure the room was mostly empty. “This opens down into the aqueducts below the city, right?” 

Chirrut was feeling out the room, every sense he had on alert, and once he was sure they were alone, he began tapping out the space, looking for another door or—

"Yeah?" Alussa said, sounding unsure, but then Chirrut hit the floor with his staff and they all heard it ring hollow. 

"I'd say yes, definitely."

“I wish we’d brought a light,” Nan-in lamented, moving toward Chirrut, crouching down and feeling out the square door covering the entrance down into the aqueducts. “Here, move your stick.”

“Maybe we should have checked the marketplace again first,” Alussa sighed, as Nan-in pulled on the ring. “I mean, he might have all the artifacts with him, and he could still be there.”

“Yeah, but we can’t just start punching people in the marketplace,” Nan-in said, finding a ring in the top of the door. “Phew! It smells.”

As he lifted the door, a foul smell breathed up from the space below; not the mouldy, regular scent of unused places, or even a sewage smell, or the slime and mustiness of standing water. Instead was the sweet-sick smell of something rotting; and it grew stronger as Nan-in lifted the door higher.

"Oh  _ Force _ ," Chirrut groaned, drawing back. "Shut that, shut that, please," he said, feeling actually ill at the scent of death. "Ugh." 

Nan-in didn't like it either, and closed the hatch. "Okay. So we know there's only one of them left. Maybe two."

"Okay, we should go back and check out the Market. Pose as interested buyers," Alussa suggested.

Suddenly a flood of light stabbed into the dark room, illuminating the three monks as they stood over the now-closed trap door where the thief had hidden the bodies of his comrades. For a moment, a man was outlined against the background of the doorway.

Then the door slammed shut,  plunging them back into darkness, two of them blinking their dazzled eyes.

“He’s getting away!” Nan-in said, and then the first shot came through the makeshift door. “Look out!”

Alussa grabbed Chirrut by the shoulders and dragged him backward out of range as two more shots came through, then the sound of echoing footsteps in the alleyway. 

“ _ Now _ he’s getting away!” Nan-in wailed, scrambling up to his feet again. 

"Let me go, let me go!" Chirrut cried, squirming free and rushing the door. He burst through first, forcing it open with his shoulder. Alussa and Nan-in ran into him as he paused, trying to sense—

"That way!"

Okay, it was easier to find a running person in a crowd with  _ eyes _ . Fair. 

Chirrut ran at their heels, and they followed him through the marketplace. "Is he even carrying anything?"

"Do you think we'd have not caught him now if he was carrying a huge statue?" 

"I'm just saying maybe we don't kill him, then! Not yet!"

“He’s carrying a  _ gun _ !” Nan-in clarified for both of them, chasing after.

Suddenly their quarry turned and began firing back, scattering the crowd into a panicked mass that began to stampede, causing Alussa to hiss and duck as the streets suddenly became chaos.

She lost track of the thief.

“Where’d he go?” Nan-in cried out, swearing and then turning on his heel. “There!—oof!”

Except all of the crowd was running  _ away _ from the man with the blaster, now, and moving through them was like trying to swim up-stream; only instead of water it was jostling bodies, shoving and panicked, trying to get away. 

Chirrut stopped running, letting Alussa and Nan-in force their way ahead of him. He couldn't sense  _ anything _ with the chaos of shouting and bodies around him. So, until his ears could help him, he reached out with the Force. 

"I am one with the Force, the Force is with me," he prayed, mostly to himself, and sensed for fear, and anger, and greed—

The wave of it, when he located it, was almost sickening. And he was coming back this way, cleverly doubling back into the crowd and the chaos and Chirrut knew he should really wait until the people had cleared out so he could hear the world around him and be sure, but there was no time. 

He stuck his staff out, quick as the strike of a snake, and tangled it with the man's legs to bring him down. He heard the man cry out and fall, and he  _ felt _ the man panic, but what he didn't hear was the sound of the hammer being pulled back on a slugthrower.

In the crowd, Nan-in got knocked down and Alussa had to grab hold of him and drag him free, both of them scrambling into an archway to get out of the rush of bodies as the square emptied.

“Where’s Chirrut?” Nan-in demanded.

“He was with you!” Alussa said.

Above, Baze had taken to the rooftops; he’d found his blaster as if by the will of the Force in the alley where he’d lost it (though it would take him a long time to admit that anything had guided it to his hand but knowledge of exactly where he’d lost it; his blood was still on the stones).  When the crowd began to scatter, he could pinpoint the origin of the panic, and then the dark flashes of the monk’s robes in the sea of moving bodies.

“Chirrut,” he muttered, seeing Chirrut stop in the surging bodies; they almost seemed to part around him, accepting him as a suddenly immovable object. For a moment, the monk had seemed to listen, and then stopped Baze’s betrayer with an acute sweep of his staff.

Baze snarled and raised his blaster, ignoring the way his muscles complained, the way his stitches stretched as he struggled to hold it steady; _ the damn double-crosser was going to shoot Chirrut!  _ He took a deep breath, forced his body to be absolutely still, and drew a bead. He had to be very careful—but very quick.


	5. Chapter 5

His finger tightened on the trigger, his eye pressed against the scope of his rifle, careful, quick. The blaster bolt released from the rifle, and then two things happened in quick succession—down in the street, at the other end of the line, the man’s hand practically disintegrated, obliterated by the force of the rifle bolt, and then the slug-thrower clattered to the gravel as Baze’s betrayer screamed in agony.

A smile twisted Baze’s features, more like a snarl, at the sharp feeling of revenge, and he stepped forward, keeping a bead on the downed man, leaning over the edge of the roof—but for all it would have felt good to shoot the damn thief four or five more times...he held off. 

The shot startled Chirrut, and he flinched. Who was  _ shooting _ at him?! He spun his staff, striking the thief across the cheek and then in the solar plexus. 

“You should stay down.”

"Chirrut!" Nan-in cried, jogging up. "What in the hell—"

Alussa followed the line of the shot up. "Baze!"

" _ Baze _ ?" Chirrut gasped. Baze had—saved his life? 

_ Of course he had. _

"Alussa, please go check on Baze. Bring him down here," Chirrut begged. "Nan-in?"

"Already on it," he answered, stepping on the thief's throat. "What did you do with the statue you took, thief?" 

Chirrut was already patting him down. _ Ew _ . "Malbus shot your hand off, I see. Probably you shouldn't have shot him in the back. He owes you a few more slugs yet. Where are the artifacts?"

On top of the building, Alussa folded her arms. "I'd be mad about you getting out of bed, but Chirrut is always right, and if you're his Destiny, I guess it means you're supposed to help us keep him alive, despite his best efforts."

When he saw that the others had everything under control, Baze breathed out, letting the tension go out of his body. He’d probably pulled a few stitches getting up here, no matter how careful and slow he’d tried to be, and he’d definitely just pulled a few in his rush to save Chirrut. He could feel a warm trickle of blood oozing down his back; but only a trickle. He turned the rifle barrel-down and leaned on it, glad to see Alussa.

“Everyone keeps saying I’m some kind of destiny,” Baze said, refusing to move right away. It hurt too much. He could stay upright, that was good enough for now. “What does that mean, exactly?”

Alussa interposed herself under Baze's arm, seeing him stagger.

"It means," she said, sounding grudgingly in awe. "That we of the Temple of the Whills believe we all have a Destiny, ordained by the Force. Chirrut Îmwe  _ knows _ his Destiny, with a clarity that is...infuriating. We think he sees the Will of the Force the better for being blind. And, ah,  _ you _ are in it.Now lean on me, and we'll get you back to the Temple." 

Below, the thief coughed out an answer, “No one would buy the damn things, I just stashed ‘em in a dumpster—ow! You have to get me help!”

He clutched the ruined hand to his body, struggling against the hold on him, though these were getting weaker by the moment.

“We could just shoot you in the back a bunch of times and leave you here,” Nan-in threatened he shifted his foot onto the man’s injured arm. “Which dumpster?”

“Ah! Just by the market; the big one, please! You have to take me to the hospital,” the thief groaned. 

“Chirrut?” Nan-in asked, letting him decide the man’s fate.

Chirrut probed the man's aura, staring at the ground past his head. "He is a lonely and miserable coward. If we kill him now, we will only put him out of his misery, and when he returns to live a sadder and more miserable life, he will have learned nothing." 

He jabbed the thief in the sternum again and turned to Nan-in. 

"We take him to our Masters, via the dumpster where he stashed our holy artifact, and via the Temple infirmaries. I think he'll find we are shockingly low on bacta, having used it mostly up on an injured hero we found lying in the alley with his back full of slugs." Chirrut turned his head about, like he was looking around the street. "Was anyone else hurt in the shooting?"

"I don't think so," Alussa said, sounding out of breath. 

"Baze?" Chirrut demanded.

“Still in one piece,” Baze answered, leaning on Alussa. They’d both gotten him down the stairs, though he was currently using his rifle a bit like a walking stick, and he was glad Alussa was strong. He sounded out of breath, too, but satisfied.

“You were dead!” the thief protested, upon seeing Baze obviously  _ not _ dead. 

“What happened to the others?” Baze asked, ignoring him. “Did you find them?”

Nan-in’s face told him practically everything he needed to know, but he answered anyway. “I think they’re probably dead. There was something dead in the aqueducts under his bolt-hole anyway.”

“We’ll have to send the authorities for that,” Alussa said. “I mean, the Empire won’t care, but maybe the bodies will get back to their families.”

“And they won’t rot in our water supply,” Nan-in added, less charitably, hoisting the injured man off the ground with far less care than any of them had treated Baze. “I’ll get him back to the temple, Chirrut.”

"We'll consider it a beginning to your pilgrimage," Chirrut added quite cheerfully. "And if you dawdle and bleed to death on the way, then Alas, the Force has Willed it. He should definitely be sent to be a part of the clean-up crew who retrieves the bodies, as well. Nothing to take the fight out of a man like the smell of rotting flesh." 

He hung back until he could offer his support to Baze. "You want to keep an eye on our thief, Sister Alussa?" he asked, and Alussa smiled a little knowingly at Baze before trading places with Chirrut, and taking the thief by the other arm. 

"We're going to have to announce you as the hero who saved our artifact, and me, you know," he told Baze. "The Masters might even make you a Guardian, too." 

He lowered his voice further. "How are you? Is that  _ your _ blood I'm smelling?"

He was beginning to get a nose for it, which was weird.

“I’ve been worse,” Baze said, quite truthfully. He was stiff and sore, and he’d pushed himself too hard and he knew it, but he had needed to do this. He leaned on Chirrut gratefully, keeping his eyes on their captive. Alussa prodded him through the slowly returning crowd—word had quickly passed that the Guardians had captured the man, and Nan-in watched him like a skinny, angry hawk.

“How would you know if it was my blood or his?” Baze wondered, amused. He didn’t answer the question, however. He was certain that the damage was minimal; a very small price to pay for at least this much revenge. “As for me becoming a Guardian, I wouldn’t be any good at it. Besides, I was also the lookout who helped him steal your artifact.”

"The Force," Chirrut assured him, and then laughed. "I have a keen sense of smell," he added. 

“As for me becoming a Guardian, I wouldn’t be any good at it. Besides, I was also the lookout who helped him steal your artifact.”

Chirrut shrugged lightly at that. "Well. Look how you paid for it. I think you've learned your lesson?" 

He hesitated; what Alussa had said up on the roof, he’d understood to a point. But he supposed the rest he’d have to ask Chirrut about. “Alussa said you think I’m your ‘destiny’—that you’re good at telling that sort of thing. She was a little less specific about what that means.”

"I  _ know _ you're my Destiny, Baze Malbus. And I am yours." Then he hummed. 

"What do you want it to be?" he asked, turning the question around on Baze.

“I’ve never thought about it,” Baze admitted. It felt like a lot of pressure to suddenly be something that sounded so important and final for someone who seemed—well. Like he had way more purpose and direction in his life than Baze ever had. Would he just be following a leader again, doing what he was told to do?

He sighed out. It all seemed very big. “I think mine has always been just to do what I was told. In the past, all I’ve wanted to be destined for—though I never would have used that word—was a warm bed for the night and a big meal and not to die the next day.”

Baze added, after a moment, “And maybe to be less cold than this place always seems to be.”

Chirrut nodded, and then laughed. 

"If you think I'm so austere that I don't know how to keep a bed warm, friend, then you had better reconsider me," he said, his smile warm but not at all teasing. He considered Baze's aura again carefully, closing his eyes to get a better sense of it. "I think your Destiny can include a full belly and bed,  _ and  _ a Greater Purpose, too." 

Up ahead, the man indicated a dumpster along one side of the alleyway, and Nan-in and Alussa nudged him forward roughly to recover the artifacts from within. The statue appeared slowly as the man struggled to lift it one handed, looking pale and green. In the moment before he passed out on the ground, Alussa rescued the statue, handed it off to Nan-in, and then picked up a satchel out of the bottom of the container as well, waving flies away.

“Can we just put him in the dumpster?” Baze wondered, practically. “With the rest of the garbage, I mean.”

"Tempting, but even thieves can have a Destiny," Chirrut said, leaving Nan-in to support Baze as he crouched before the thief. He helped him to sit up, and splashed some water on the man’s face to bring him around before offering him a sip of water from his pouch. "What is your name?"

The thief jerked back, shocked. "You don't care."

"I do," Chirrut said, quietly, a private conversation for his ears only. "You're about to become a servant of the Temple of the Whills, and I love all my brothers and sisters and nonbinary sentient siblings. And you've had an important role to play in my Destiny; however mean and wicked your intentions, you've done the Force's work, and we could even be friends."

The man said nothing for a time. "My name is Dyl."

"Dyl," Chirrut repeated. "It is important that you walk to the Temple on your own legs, Dyl, but I can help you."

Chirrut heard him swallow. "Thank you."

Looking on, Nan-in grumbled. Sure, mercy was a fine virtue and an important tenet of their faith, but a thief and a murderer and a traitor? 

"Not again, Chirrut," he groaned, mostly to himself.

Baze watched the level of compassion with uncertainty; this man had literally shot him in the back. How could Chirrut even want him near his home and friends? Mercy had a place; it should be shown to those who deserved it  _ (there was that word again, the one which he’d had trouble with just the other day _ ). 

“I take it he does this often?” Baze asked. “How many destinies does he have?”

“Oh, no, just the one real one,” Nan-in assured Baze. “It’s not quite like that.”

“I’ve heard that three times in ten minutes,” Baze muttered.

“He just takes in strays,” Nan-in said. “Usually just...well, you know, I stole his stick, when I was a kid. I was just this little street rat, an orphan, and I didn’t have any power except to be mean to someone I thought I could get away with it.”

A beat. “I mean, he kicked my ass...” 

“So he saved you, too?” Baze asked. 

“No! He  _ kicked my ass _ ,” Nan-in repeated. “And I asked him to teach me to fight. The Force saved me, he just held the door open.” 

Baze watched the former thief get up, supported by Chirrut, while Alussa carried the artifacts carefully, as they all went toward the temple. 

“I really want to kill him,” Baze admitted. “I don’t think I could ever be what the Force wants.” 

Nan-in let out his sigh in a laugh. "Friend, the thief didn't shoot me and  _ I _ want to kill him. Lucky for us, and this joker, and—well, for everyone but Chirrut, I guess— _ asshole _ —lucky for us, the Force accepts imperfect offerings." 

He glanced at Baze's back, finding blood soaking through his shirt in a few places. "You okay to walk? I mean, you're a big tough guy, of course, but, just, you know, try to warn me before you pass out, is all."

“I’m not there yet,” Baze assured him. It hurt, but his body felt steady. Solid. He felt alive. He was leaking, but he could watch Chirrut’s back hold up and keep his own straight as they made their way back to the temple.

Maybe he  _ could _ be a Destiny, whatever it actually meant. Or maybe he couldn’t—it was not the sort of decision to be entered into lightly, he guessed that much. He didn’t feel certain. That was the issue—it seemed like the sort of thing you should be certain about. Like the Force; he wasn’t certain about that, either.


	6. Chapter 6

At the temple, they reported to Master Sidhava, and Baze made an effort to stand on his own, trying to keep straight under the eyes of the Master as Chirrut cheerfully explained the situation to the frowning, then uncertain, then finally clearly exasperated Master, and Alussa returned the artifacts.

"Dyl would like the opportunity to reform himself and dedicate his life to the service of the Temple after his misdeeds," Chirrut announced.

"And this," he said with an additional flourish, unable to see Master Sidhava's weary expression, "is Baze Malbus. The hero who found and subdued the thief so that our artifacts were returned to us, and who took only a hand in retribution to consider himself full paid. We owe him honor and—"

"All _right_ , Chirrut," Sidhava said. "Thank you, Dyl, for your, ah, offering. We will speak to you when you are healed," he told the man sternly, and had two Guardians escort him to the infirmary.

Nan-in leaned over and suggested, in an undertone, that Dyl be guarded at all times; at least for a little while. For his safety as well as everyone else’s.

"And thank you, Baze Malbus, for returning our holy artifacts to us, at great personal cost. The Temple will compensate you, and your wounds will be attended. You were in Jedha for...what line of work are you in?"

Baze felt color spreading across his face, down his neck. He’d never had an attractive blush, and he’d never dealt with praise from authority very well. Probably, it was why he’d never really been promoted in the military.

“I don’t need any further compensation,” Baze protested. “Chirrut saved my life, that’s—it’s enough.”

Master Sidhava looked at him mildly, and then to Chirrut, who was grinning broadly and radiating some mixture of nervousness and pride, like he had when he was a small child making a move that the Force told him was right. He was proud to do the Force’s bidding, but uncertain of the outcome. Going on faith, and hope.

“I was a mercenary,” Baze admitted, pulling Sidhava’s gaze back onto him. “That man and his companions hired me to keep watch, but then he double crossed me. I would have died in the street.”

Sidhava’s brows drew in, but he sensed that Baze had more to say. His voice was rough, and his words were not very certain of themselves, but the message grew stronger, even as the mercenary grew a little paler, a little less steady on his feet. He’d taxed himself for this, he was pushing himself even now.

“If you’ll let me finish my recovery here,” Baze managed, but he didn’t finish the sentence. The room was starting to spin a little and he didn’t want to faint here.

“Of course,” Sidhava said, taking pity; now here was a prospect worth salvaging from the muck. As little hope as he had for Dyl’s usefulness— _Baze_ he could see real promise in. And despite Chirrut’s somewhat unorthodox methods, he was just the monk for the job. “The Force suggests to me you have an immediate need for recovery, so I won’t tax your time any longer. Thank you, Baze Malbus. The Force is with you today. For the rest, you should lean on Chirrut, I think.”

Chirrut, face bright with blush and hope, interposed himself between Baze and gravity, and bowed low before Master Sidhava, before leading Baze, limping, away.

"You know we already think you're quite heroic. You don't need to convince us further by being so selfless and humble and... _honest_ ," Chirrut said. "I was trying to cover for you, but maybe that was wrong of me. A man should never be embarrassed of his choices, only recognize where he was in the Force and where he was in himself, and aim higher next time."

"We're not going back to the cell, this time,” Chirrut said as he led Baze a different way. You shall receive some proper hospitality, now that you deserve our official thanks."

Chirrut turned a key in a heavy, tall door, and led Baze inside. The space was warm, suddenly, _finally_ , easing warmth back into Baze's bones. The sound of trickling water greeted them, and the sky far overhead brightened what was, apparently, a garden. The air was fragrant, and wind chimes stirred softly.

Baze tipped his head back, taking it all in, from the planted floor to the warm pool to the sky overhead; an oasis in the middle of this desert. It seemed like a vision at first, like some kind of mirage brought on by the haze of his pain; but it was the smell that convinced him otherwise. Savory with the herbs, sweet with nectar, and open to the sky—but warm.

It made Baze sharply aware of how dirty and unwashed he was.

"We grow the herbs, here, and we bathe here," Chirrut explained, pointing to the water running into a pool with steps leading down into it.

"The heat comes up from the furnaces below. Are the flowers blooming? Alussa says they are the only thing in sight I am really missing out on," he said, easing Baze onto the steps leading into the pool. "Don't fall in. Lean back if you're feeling dizzy. I'll return with food and bandages."

“Some of the flowers are,” Baze told Chirrut, pausing to take off his borrowed robes. Probably, they could stand a wash too. He was sorry that he’d made so many people support him when he was now aware of his own desperate need for a bath. It had required unfortunate proximity to his armpits. And Chirrut _had_ said his sense of smell was very good. Hopefully it would eventually recover from this assault. “They’re—”

He stopped himself from saying ‘red’; it meant nothing. “On a world I went to with the Republic, there were small frogs with bright patches on their backs to show they were not good to eat—the flowers remind me of those.”

When Chirrut had left and Baze had gotten out of his clothes—and nudged them aside into some place where they wouldn’t offend—Baze eased down the steps into the warm water gratefully, sitting on the bottom step to let the dizziness pass as the warm water changed his blood pressure.

Chirrut kissed Baze on the top of his head when he returned, finding his clothes in a pile beside him. He wasn't sure why he kissed Baze, except for the attraction and tenderness he felt for the man warring inside him, and he usually had better control of himself. Maybe he was just so grateful to have Baze here and safe that there was no holding himself back. 

"We can wash these. I finally found yours," he said, to change the subject, setting down his burdens in a specific order so he would know what he was reaching for. The clean clothes he set well away from the water, on a warm rock, and the food he set a few steps up, the medicines further down.

"Here: drink this tea while I tend your wounds—it will relax you and relieve some pain, and it's very nourishing," Chirrut encouraged, pouring him a small cup and feeling up his bare back to free bacta patches, discard them, and wash the wounds.

The tender gesture surprised Baze, and he looked up to watch Chirrut spread his clothes—or at least his pants and original underwear. It wasn’t much, but it was his. While Chirrut was gone, he’d dunked himself under the water, staying close to the steps, and gotten his hair wet to get the worst of the grime out. If he now smelled a little bit like a wet dog, he hoped it was nothing a little soap couldn’t set right.

“Thank you,” Baze said, accepting the tea. He expected it to be bitter and medicinal, but instead it was floral and light, sweet with a little bit of honey. He cupped it in both hands and leaned forward to let Chirrut tend to his back. He already felt much better for the warm water. “It’s good!”

"I'm glad! There's more, and I want you to drink the whole pot. Are you finished?" Chirrut asked, and when he was, he filled the tiny cup again, putting his hand around Baze's hand to guide the cup to the spout.

"Are you warming up, yet?" he asked with a wry smile, his touch lingering. Baze's hands were rough and almost gnarled, and he wanted to keep holding them until they relaxed, but he eventually continued to work.

“Yes. How bad is it?” he asked, as Chirrut began peeling away the old patches and exploring with gentle touches. It was very reassuring, a comforting touch that seemed to ease even where it should hurt, as Chirrut ran his fingers over the lines of stitches and found those that had burst.

"It's not bad," Chirrut assured him. "They should hold long enough for a proper bath, and I'll dress them again after. I brought your comb, as well." He peeled the bandages away from the exit wounds on his front, finding them scabbing nicely.

“I should wash my hair before you try and use it,” Baze said, watching Chirrut peel away the two  bandages on his front, guessing the wounds were healing about as well as they could for how new they still were.

"Of course. I borrowed some shampoo from Alussa. She has long hair, too," he informed Baze, which he realized belatedly was a stupid statement to a sighted man.

When Baze looked up, Chirrut was right there; leaning over him from the steps, expression focused as he checked over the scabs with very careful fingers.

Up close, he was very handsome: even his sightless eyes were fascinating, and Baze had to remind himself that destiny or not, there was probably a proper order to all of this. Even if Chirrut had already offered to share a bed with him, earlier that day.

“You asked me earlier what I wanted from my destiny,” Baze said, in a low tone—no need to be any louder. “It’s yours, too. What do you want?”

"What do _I_ —want?" Chirrut repeated, dumbly. He had his head turned slightly to the side, looking into the middle distance as he applied a greasy salve to Baze's wounds to protect them from the water. It had a numbing property, and he felt Baze's muscles relax under him.

He coughed, not sure he had ever been _asked_ that before, not sure that _mattered_.

"I should like...for my life to better the lives of others. I should like for my life to matter. I would like to fulfill my Destiny. Ah." He shrugged awkwardly.

"I also like the things you speak of. Food, warmth, companionship. Creature comforts. I don't think I'm ready to join the Force fully," he added with a smirk.

"Okay, are you ready to get into the water all the way? I can help you," he offered, shucking off his outerwear to lay where it was dry.

“So a destiny isn’t a concrete set of guidelines for how your entire future will go?” Baze asked, now genuinely curious to know what it was supposed to mean—though it seemed like he was only ever going to define it by discovering the places around all the edges.

"Well—it _is,_  but it's not something we have to necessarily actively follow," Chirrut said, worrying he was explaining this wrong. "All is as the Force wills it, and those who defy the Will of the Force are only brought back to their Destinies in a more roundabout way. Which could be—creepy, I suppose. But I find it comforting."

Baze eased down off the bottom step and into the deeper water when he was permitted, sighing out as the warmth came up over his chest and shoulders, all of which were sore after he’d asked so much of them today.  “I think your life already matters.”

Chirrut smiled, felt an odd pull forward, like he wanted to kiss Baze, but he fought it. That was definitely his carnal nature talking, _not_ his Destiny. "Thanks. I think yours matters, too. A great deal. To me."

When Baze looked up he was—shouldn’t have been but _was_ surprised by the wiry and clearly defined strength of Chirrut’s bare body, and he had to tear his eyes away again, coughing to try and restart his thoughts. He plunged himself under the water again to get his hair wet, and came up scrubbing his face, feeling like the outer layer of his skin must be comprised at least of half grime.

Chirrut laughed as Baze ducked under and suddenly came up spluttering.

"I _could_ help you with all of that," he offered, though he handed the stubborn man a sponge and soap.

"I refuse to allow you to pull any more stitches by trying to wash your hair, however, so you must leave that to me," he insisted. The close proximity to Baze's nakedness was thrilling in ways it shouldn't be—that he was close enough to _touch_ —but also felt good in ways that were perfectly acceptable: he _knew_ in every innocent touch that he was going to grow old and die with this man at his side, and the rest didn’t matter.

It took Baze a moment to realize (only with the rough surface of the sponge in his hand) _exactly_ what Chirrut was offering to help him with. He’d come up from under the water and found the monk even closer to him, and still just as unclothed. He had that serious expression he got when he was thinking about the future—and Baze was unsure how exactly he knew what it meant, but he was certain.

Rubbing the soap on the sponge produced a satisfactory amount of lather; initially tinted brown from his dirty palms. “You’ll want me to sit down for that, I imagine.”

Though it was kind of tempting to make Chirrut reach up to do his hair, Baze wanted it clean too much to mess around. He worked the soapy sponge over his top, starting with his arms and scouring until he felt clean, before he sank down to give Chirrut his opportunity to wash Baze’s hair.

"You're not _that_ much taller than me," Chirrut shot back. "But—yes. That would be easier, if you don't want me to tug. I have a sister, I can be quite vicious."

“So I know you’re a monk. I know you have a good heart. Tell me about the rest of you,” Baze requested.

"That is too generous an assessment of me," Chirrut said. "I have had many privileges and a life of fulfilling my Destiny which I enjoy. Of course I have a good heart."

_I know it could be taken from me at any moment—that it will be, when the Force Wills it._

“I was asking about your past,” Baze corrected. “Tell me about your life before you were a monk—you just said you had a sister?”

Sliding behind Baze, following the line of his shoulder, Chirrut explored his hair, seeing what he had to work with. It was a mix of short and long—it felt stupid in his hands, and he wanted it longer. And it was awfully tangled, almost ratted up. Good thing Alussa had also sent him with some oil ("Not for _that_!" she had made sure to tease him). Chirrut emptied a generous portion of soap into his palms, lathered it up, and worked from the top of Baze's scalp down the back and sides, working up what felt like a good lather so he could give his head a massage. "You should probably close your eyes," he added, as an afterthought.

“I have,” Baze admitted, feeling utterly relaxed; his hair wasn’t exactly styled, he’d just stopped cutting it when he’d left the military. “Don’t worry, a little soap in my eyes won’t make you a mortal enemy.”

Something about his hair hadn’t felt _right_ when it was short, as he’d taken his first steps into real independence. But now it was still a pretty bad tangle. Baze supposed he should cut it off again and start fresh, or just leave it short. The monks here seemed to keep their hairstyles simple and pretty severe. Even Alussa only had shoulder length hair, which she kept pulled back tight into the stubbiest tail Baze had ever seen. Maybe it had been the comb in Baze’s bag that had given him the idea—or maybe it had just been there when he finally needed it, like evidence that Chirrut’s actions were guided by something he couldn’t understand.

"Okay, rinse, and then story time," Chirrut said amicably, helping Baze to dunk himself to rinse the soap out of his hair, and then eased him back onto the steps, letting Baze soak up to his shoulders.

"Comfortable?" he asked, working some oil into Baze's hair, which made it immediately cooperate better.

"So I'm from Enarc—it's it's own system, but near Naboo. Trade Federation controlled it during the Wars, but we're independent now. I grew up on a warm mountainside with my sister and mother and father, in a palace with lots of servants. My father is one of our representatives to the Galactic Senate, so I never lacked for anything. I was born as I am now—blind, but by the time I was old enough for prosthetics, they already noticed Force Sensitivity in me. My mother, bless her, feared the Jedi would take her baby boy away from her to train if he were sighted, so I never got the surgery. As it turned out, I'm not actually Force Sensitive _enough_ —so I could have had sight, after all. But maybe it is my Destiny to rely on Force Sight instead."

Chirrut shrugged, combing out the knots from Baze's hair carefully.

"Then her baby boy ran away to join a monastery at the tender age of twelve, anyway. I write my mother regularly, and my sister often. Father sometimes visits Jedha, or sends me passage booked for home. But I don't see them as often as I should like." He sighed. "Another worldly attachment. I should say it is _nice_ to go back to visit, where it's not so cold and not so dry, and, you know, I live in a palace with servants."

He chuckled. "You see I'm not a very _good_ monk. But I'm trying."

Baze considered the differences in what Chirrut described and what there was, here, now. Why give all that up for this? No one was going to scrub the floor for the monks, and certainly they were more akin to servants than likely to have any. For a moment, he almost wondered if Chirrut was outright lying, making a joke at Baze’s expense. After all, here he was working—something—into Baze’s hair and patiently working the tangles out of it. A servant’s job.

He turned a look at Chirrut over his shoulder, and decided that at least enough of it was true that Baze was hopelessly outclassed, but clearly Chirrut was capable of being kind to anyone. _That_ kindness and _this_ kindness was likely no different. Nan-in, Alussa, Dyl...all of them were met with the same compassion he’d shown Baze.

“So when you say ‘destiny’, you mean I’m your project?” he wondered, saying it aloud before he meant to. He tried to soften the words—he hadn’t meant them to quite sound like that. “I mean, it’s good that you can show kindness to people, and...well, I saw a lot of the results of the Jedi Purge. I’m glad you weren’t among them.”

Chirrut almost laughed at that— _project, indeed!_ —when Baze mentioned the purge.

"Thank you, me too. My mother still thinks it could happen here and wants me home. But my place is here. My Destiny is here. And, for the record, _no_ , I do not mean you are my project, any more than I am yours." (Chirrut knew that the combination of the privilege of his upbringing and the fact that he could basically sense the future made him, for example, perfectly insufferable when he didn't get his way—for starters.)

He sighed, feeling he needed to explain more.

"I have this—gift. I cannot see colors or faces but I can see—threads of the Force. We are luminous beings, you know, in the Force. The thread of my life and yours are—intertwined. Bright, too. Important. Everything that everyone does is the Will of the Force—but there's something more. I sense great pain and even greater sacrifice. But it's a Destiny. We can't run from it." Chirrut set the comb down, poured a cup of tea, and handed it to Baze again.

"I'm—here to try to understand that, I guess," he said after a moment, answering the unasked question: "I left all that because my Destiny is here."

“I’m not so sure,” Baze said, putting his cup to his mouth. “If it was the will of the Force that left me in the street, I think I’d rather not listen to it.”

He could almost sense Chirrut’s protest rising up before he actually spoke it. “We could have met again just as easily when I got off the ship here; I would never have agreed to help if I remembered which planet Jedha was. Or before I was shot, while I was standing guard...”

Baze pushed the cup of tea against his mouth. “How can we understand something that guides us into getting hurt needlessly?”

"That's my problem exactly!" Chirrut cried, a bit too loud, and then covered his mouth. "The Force is not _good_. It's a Force. The Jedi moralized it too much, so I'm doubly glad I was never a part of their ranks. But it means I don't have a good answer to that, Baze. My Masters tell me it is to do with our will struggling against the Will of the Force. But...it's insufficient for me."

Chirrut trembled slightly. "My great Destiny. Our Destiny—it could mean the deaths of many innocent lives. It might mean saving even more. I only know that it is big and bright, but _ethically_ it could bode good or ill. We don't debate _ethics_ often, here."  

“So you listen, and obey, and if not, the Force puts you there anyway?” Baze asked, considering this information. He swished his hand through the water, feeling the strength in his shoulder. It had a long way to go. “It’s not so different from being a soldier...”

The thought seemed to strike Baze as strange.

“Now it makes sense, I think. Like being a soldier, if you let go and do what the Force says, you’re letting go of yourself and...” he shrugged. He knew what he meant, but not how to put it into words.

After several moments, Chirrut wanted to change the subject. "But my sister is having a baby in a few months, so I'll be back soon to meet them," he admitted sheepishly.

“Good,” Baze said, finishing his cup—the tea was colder now. “I’m glad you can keep contact with your family. I hope they aren’t suffering too badly under the Empire.”

"I think they are not. The Empire, as much as I hate it, has reinstated Enarcan government and booted the Trade Federation out completely. Another complicated question of ethics."

“A question of whether power corrupts,” Baze agreed. “It makes more sense why you’d let me cut my teeth on that one.”

Chirrut smiled. "Are you hungry?"

Baze rinsed his hair again, wringing water out of it. “I’m starving. I hoped you were going to ask. Am I allowed to eat solid food now?”

Chirrut laughed, moving on from the heavy conversation to the light easily—though Baze was turning out to be a stimulating debater with his profound view of the world, and he wanted to discuss these things more with him, later.

"Yes, of course. Start light, perhaps, with the fruit, while I tend your back, in case the pain makes you sick." He helped Baze move up to a higher step, and draped a towel over his knees before pulling the tray of food closer. Taking another towel, Chirrut carefully blotted Baze's chest and back dry, and squeezed out his dripping hair without mussing it. "Oh, your hair has curl!" Chirrut discovered with delight, as the wet locks drew together around his fingers.

“Yes,” Baze agreed, around a mouthful of fruit; maybe his first bite had been a little big, nearly  half the fruit had disappeared into his mouth and he’d discovered there was a stone at the center, and that it was quite chewy. But sweet. He finished chewing, and swallowed. “It means it locks together and mats...”

Baze was quiet, focused on the food while Chirrut tended his back, wrapping it up again to protect his wounds.

"So, for the record," Chirrut finally managed, as something niggled at him, "I didn't tell you about my family background so you can start saying I 'let' and 'allow' you to do anything."

Baze snorted, an amused sound that was...well, not exactly graceful. He set aside a handful of fruit pits, and finished chewing, rinsing his fingers in the water and swallowing before he answered. “It’s not you I’m worried about. I think if we conspired to give me solid food before Alussa said it was okay, we wouldn’t have to worry about Destiny beyond the five minutes after she found out.”

"Good point," Chirrut said with a grin, relaxing mostly, but not entirely, on the issue.

It was hard not to see Chirrut as outside his class, as somehow above him—he was a Monk—even if he said he was a bad one, he’d grown up  well-to-do, made the right decisions in his life. Baze could barely aspire to make the right decisions in the future, if his stars lined up.  

“Don’t concern yourself too much,” Baze continued. “I was a soldier for years, permission is something that was trained into my body.”

"I have a great deal of concern for you," Chirrut countered. "I want you to feel...free..."

He might have been about to add to that, but stopped. "Soldier or monk or slave, our souls are free in the Force. And—before you ask—no, I don't know how to reconcile that with the Destiny thing."

His back was finished. "Would you lean back for me? Just—rest your head here, so I can do your front," Chirrut asked, arranging Baze so he lay back into his arms, his head against his shoulder, and though Chirrut would go to his grave claiming this was entirely about bandaging Baze's chest wounds, it was most certainly less than half about that.

It’s somewhere between Chirrut’s touch turning from clinical to curious, tracing an old scar that traverses in punctuation beneath the newer injury and that crosses the dark blot of Baze’s areola that it occurs to Baze that all of Chirrut’s advances have been in earnest. It’s a strange thing to consider; that anything about him has been anything like alluring over the last few days—he’s been injured, unwashed, unable to fend for himself.

But he was alive—and Chirrut was alive, and it left Baze feeling impulsive enough to lift his strong hand on his uninjured arm and lay it alongside Chirrut’s cheek. His fingers felt rough over Chirrut’s smooth, warm skin, but he yielded when Baze turned his head to press their mouths together, even at this awkward angle.

Chirrut was almost startled by the touch on his cheek, so unexpected from Baze who seemed so stingy—or perhaps unsure—about initiating physical contact. He let out a breath in a little sigh, and he couldn't say, really, who moved his head first before their lips brushed—an accident, perhaps—as Chirrut's fingertips had brushed more than injured skin—but then they were _kissing_ , and, _oh_ , this was better even than in his dreams, actually wetting his eyes he only belatedly remembered to close. Chirrut's arms wound around Baze, now, a selfish, possessive hold, gentled only by the remembrance of his hurts, and he pulled back from the kiss only to kiss him again, to be the initiator, to make clear for his part this was no accident. This was—

What being One with the Force must feel like.

It was a strange, electric feeling, more than Baze expected, encompassing until he had to remember that breathing was a thing they should both do, and he eased their mouths apart a little guiltily, his hand still cupping Chirrut’s cheek as they both tried to figure out how to exist without that connection—they had done it before, certainly, but now the craving for _more_ seized both of them.

There was a long, breathy pause.

"Um so if we're still worrying about what Alussa says is okay for you to do, I'm pretty solidly certain this is, well, _not_ one of those things," Chirrut said sheepishly.


	7. Chapter 7

“Why?” Baze wondered, dazed and lazy, making no effort to recollect his limbs. He was about as relaxed as he could get; warm, comfortable, full of tea and fruit. And the kiss had been _good_ , though he wasn’t sure what really had struck him. “Will I catch something from kissing you?”

Chirrut giggled, and then laughed outright. He laid his hand over Baze's, and turned just enough to kiss his palm before lowering Baze's hand into the water.

"I think you already have," he replied sagely, and then giggled again. "But I meant—Alussa will be cross if I don’t finish dressing your wounds."

His lips were actually tingling, and he kissed Baze again, on his temple.

“Alright,” Baze agreed, lowering his hand, letting Chirrut get at the injury on his side, though he shifted a little when too-gentle fingers found a ticklish spot, and then wondered—idly, comfortably—if he’s just given a tactical advantage to a beloved enemy. The thought intrudes from nowhere, something foreign, and slides under the radar of the rest of his awareness. It’s a thought that belongs in an old, comfortable relationship, not this fledgling effort.

"Oh no, are you _ticklish_ , Baze?" Chirrut asked, grin so broad it confirmed all of Baze's fears, but he made no move to exploit this information, perhaps biding his time.

“I guess I have to get out of this bath to sleep,” Baze lamented, when he was done being bandaged. He lifted himself out of the water, and allowed Chirrut to hand him a towel, but finished  the job of drying himself with it. “How do you stand all this cold?”

Chirrut shrugged.

"Remember warm times, and think of how many people have never been warm. And, well, I find it difficult to feel truly cold when I am with you." He wouldn’t be deterred from helping dry Baze off and dress again.

He winced, belatedly. "That was painfully cheesy, wasn't it? I have several lists of pick-up lines prepared, just let me know when they're no longer necessary," he said, and for the briefest moment his washed-out blue eyes met Baze's, and focused as if his eyes could see as well as anyone's, but then they bled through him again. His smile belied his nervous joy, barely contained, and he couldn't take his hands off of Baze for a moment.

“It was cheesy,” Baze agreed, pulling on a clean top over his beaten-but-restored clothes, sighing out in contentment to be washed. He looked at Chirrut then and could almost sense the oncoming storm, even as they made a brief sort of eye contact. Baze shook his head.

“Go on and get them all out now,” Baze told him, reaching out to recover Chirrut’s stick and handing it back to him when he was done getting dressed. “Clearly you’ve been saving them up for a while.”

Chirrut was as surprised by his staff being nudged against his knuckles as he was by Baze's invitation, and he smiled brightly.

"I like the classics, you know: is that a blaster in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" he said, and then his smile faltered a little nervously. Baze was standing so close he could feel his breath. Chirrut wanted so badly to kiss him again he was sure the desire alone would kill him.

He reached out, with just his fingertips, but felt Baze flinch back, and he stopped.

The instinct to move away was one he should have been able to resist, but it came in out of the corner of his vision and—well he wasn’t sure how Chirrut would react to him. It was stupid to feel shy about how he looked with a blind man, but what if he—felt funny?

When neither of them said or did anything, Chirrut reached forward again, pressing his hand to Baze's cheek. It was scruffy, and Chirrut wondered why he hadn't noticed that when they were, you know, _kissing_. "Are you going to kiss me again or do I have to lie to my friends later?"

“I’m curious what you’d tell them,” Baze admitted, lifting his hands to Chirrut’s sides, gently, leaning together—now they both had clothes on, it was a little bit more normal to do things in this order. He leaned down, and pressed his mouth against Chirrut’s forehead, finding it a little unnerving that he never closed his eyes—but also charming. Unique.

“But I only heard one pickup line. There was a list?” he teased, drawing back slightly.

"Damn it," Chirrut gasped. He had turned his face up towards the sound of his voice, the breath of his lips, but Baze was _teasing_ him. “That _was_ a pickup line!”

Chirrut wondered if he dared to just surge up onto his toes and take matters into his own lips.

"Um. Can I borrow a kiss? I promise I'll give it back," he tried, hoping he looked cute, whatever the hell cute looked like.

“Has that ever worked before?” Baze wondered, amused, but not laughing _at_ Chirrut; after all he’d already admitted they were terrible pick up lines. He was only delivering on a promise. He could practically feel the impatience radiating through Chirrut, the way his—already tight—body felt tense, poised on the edge of something.  He wondered if he could—or should—find out what the results were of letting Chirrut give in to his impatience.  

Chirrut slid his hand to the back of Baze's neck, trying to pull him into a kiss, but Baze was unmovable, and anyway, he didn’t want to try hard enough to hurt him . He whined slightly, but would never admit to it.

"No," he said, petulantly, and grabbed Baze's shirt instead. "If this were my garden I'd put your two lips and my two lips together," he said, but that was dumb and he was getting desperate:

"Would you go on a blind date with me?" He thumped his stick against the ground. "This staff isn't the _only_ wood I'd like to hold tonight—"

And when Baze let out a laugh Chirrut dove at it, crashing their lips together, letting his stick clatter to the floor as he wrapped his arms around Baze and _kissed_ him, sighing out in relief and utter contentment.

Baze practically had to catch Chirrut, as he launched himself up to equalize their height and then lifted his feet off the floor so Baze couldn’t put him down again until they were done kissing—and this time it went on and on. Chirrut was aggressive—and Baze liked it, getting his arms around Chirrut’s waist and holding him up, kissing him—and this was no casual, careful kiss.

It was like they knew each other—more than that, _understood_ each other on a level that was impossible. That the kiss was a call-and-response that had happened a thousand times instead of just two; a _hundred_ thousand.

If Chirrut had been in any doubt about his Destiny and soul mate and Baze Malbus—which he wasn't—he certainly wasn't in any doubt now. The kiss _echoed_ , a tiny bell filling up a great cavern with song.

Baze set Chirrut down again, gasping, shifting back, suddenly unsettled—but Baze didn’t let go of him. “What was that?”

Chirrut's eyes were brimmed with tears that made his eyes sparkle back at him. He tried a few times to explain it, mouth working, and then he shook his head and swallowed.

"A welcome home," he whispered.  Chirrut blinked, then, and ran his hand down Baze's arm.

"We should get you to bed," he said, voice just as soft, like Baze was a bird he could scare away.

Instinctively, Baze reached up to pass the pad of his thumb gently beneath Chirrut’s eyes, easing the moisture away. He didn’t have an answer to that—didn’t know if there _was_ an answer to that. But Chirrut let him off the hook, and he nodded then—realized that wasn’t very clear.

“I’m exhausted,” Baze agreed. “And I can sleep the sleep of the avenged.”

He stepped back, paused, and then asked with a hint of mischief in his tone. “Do you want your stick back, or are you going to throw it on the floor again?”

"I can get my own damned stick, thank you, you've probably pulled more stitches with all your machismo," Chirrut grumped, and then laughed brightly, locating the staff with his foot and launching it up in the air so he could catch it and look _awesome._  He _felt_ awesome. He gathered up the rest of their things, including the food Baze had yet to eat, and took him back ("Would it _kill_ you to lean on me?!") to the room by the infirmary.

When they entered the room, more amenities had been left: a pitcher of water, fresh, fine clothes, even more food, better bedding, and a hotter lantern. The room was almost too warm, now, and Chirrut laughed after Baze had pointed out the new additions.

"They really are grateful to you. _We_ really are. Here, you sit. You have to try the falafel while it's still warm," he said, kneeling in front of Baze and holding the little cake up between his fingers.

Baze sat, as instructed. He wasn’t sure what falafel was—or why it was green on the inside, but he was grateful for the extra warmth. He considered the clothes as well, passing them through his hands—they were well made, but austere at least. And they weren’t monk’s robes, which was thoughtful, as well.

“I’m the one who should be grateful,” Baze reminded. “I would have die—”

Chirrut shoved the morsel into Baze’s mouth, and he accepted, chewing it. It was—savory, not quite what he expected. Crispy outside and ...mushy. Baze considered, swallowing. “What’s it made of?”

"Beans! Peas! Something like that. it's delicious. Sister Alussa is going to smell it out and come eat all ours if we're not quick—presuming you're sharing," Chirrut said, his mouth already full. He couldn't keep his hands off of Baze, and was resting comfortably between his knees—except for the proximity, keeping his touches chaste and even gentlemanly. He rested one hand atop Baze's thigh while the other investigated the tray of food deftly.

"What else is here? Ah! More tea, good. You should have more of that before you sleep. For the pain," Chirrut said, pouring a cup.

"Oh! And sweets! These are terrible, you don't want them," he teased, and made as if to hide them.

The contact was unfamiliar, but sort of  endearing. It grounded Baze, even as Chirrut seemed to wind himself up into a hyper frenzy that Baze suspected had everything to do with happiness. He accepted the tea when Chirrut lifted it up toward him, leaning back against the wall, watching Chirrut delicately touch the contents until he encountered the treats, which he then started to gather up.

“It’s been a while since I’ve had sweets,” Baze said, sipping his tea and watching Chirrut with a lazy smile that echoed his clear joy. “But usually ‘terrible’ is not the first descriptor...”

He rescued one from the corner of the plate, but made no move to take any from Chirrut. Of course he was sharing—he owed Chirrut, and more than just a few treats. He enjoyed it, all flakey layers and sweet sticky nuts and cinnamon. But more than he wanted to eat, he was tired.

“Is the tea supposed to make me so sleepy?” he wondered, yawning.

"It is," Chirrut said. "All part of my elaborate plan to drug you and steal your sweets and—" he smiled up at Baze shyly, "keep stealing kisses."

Of course he wouldn't actually steal Baze's food—not all of it, anyway. But kisses were another matter.

“What a thief,” Baze said, amused, sleepy. It seemed this place had a history of rehabilitating such criminals. “But you can’t steal what’s freely given.”

Chirrut beamed at that, and kissed the corner of Baze's mouth. It was warm and wet and the way Baze kissed back was like a curious bird pecking at him. He wondered what Baze's lips looked like when he smiled.

"May I touch your face?" Chirrut blurted out, nervous energy now.

"I—oh, except not when my hands are sticky! Though I suppose if I got honey in your beard I'd just have to lick it off..." He smiled. Baze had such a good _feel_ about him that made Chirrut want more, beyond propriety, certainly, but what was a little forwardness among soul mates?

It continued to startle Baze how forward Chirrut was, but he supposed—there had never been anything in Chirrut’s life to keep him from pressing for what he wanted. He had a momentum that was curious. Charming, in a way. The request still made him feel faintly shy. What if Chirrut didn’t like his face? He was not particularly handsome, though he’d never really thought himself ugly either. It hadn’t mattered; it wasn’t a metric he needed to measure himself against, until now.

“Yes,” Baze agreed, drawing the word out a little. “It’s barely a beard yet anyway. I just haven’t had a razor...”

"It's more than I've ever had. According to my friends, a beard is something I should never try to grow. It's scraggly. You, however..."

“I can see where it would be patchy,” Baze said, mildly. “It’s alright. Clean-shaven suits you. I guess you could grow one of those monk moustaches... no, on second thought, that’s a bad suggestion.”

Chirrut began with Baze's jaw and cheeks, working in and then up. His nimble fingers padded across  the plains and slopes of his face, mapping scruff and solid jawline, small mouth turned slightly down into a permanent frown. Maybe that meant his smiles were worth more.

Chirrut fell silent, as business became pleasure. A sweet, flattish nose, rounded cheeks in spite of his strong and even _thin_ frame, and eyes slanted like his own, but squinted from harsh light and sand and hard work too young. A strong brow, thoughtful, knit in the middle where Baze didn't relax his features, which, fair enough, letting some guy touch your face like this for the first time...

With Chirrut’s hands on him, he felt somewhat less nervous about it. There was no taking it back now, and well—what harm did it really do? He couldn’t have avoided it forever, and he doubted it mattered all that much what he looked like to someone who never really had to see him.

"It's a—" What did you say about the the only face you ever fell in love with? "It's...perfect."

Chirrut blinked. "You must have lots of girlfriends. I have a sister, so I'm not afraid of fighting girls. If you like any of them you might warn them how jealous I can be."

He cupped Baze's face in his hands and drew him into a kiss.

"Thank you, friend. A few more passes and I shall have yours memorized better than my own." Already he felt confident he could pick Baze out of a lineup—a not impossible scenario.

Baze’s protest at any notion of ‘lots of girlfriends’ was cut off by the kiss, and he leaned back, shaking his head—more in bewilderment. It was strange to find someone outside of himself who had looked at him for more than five minutes—of course, it was a blind man, only that made sense. “No girlfriends, no one you’ll have to fight anyway.”

Because he had never been in one place that long; long enough to dally occasionally. To have a fling, or in a rare case, a week of flings, but never any lasting attachment to one place or person. “I think I’d have to be a deeper person for that.”

Baze hesitated. “Than I was, anyway, as a soldier.”

"You're a very deep person, Baze Malbus," Chirrut countered. "Just—unmoored, I think."

He kissed Baze again, and then eased his hands down his shoulders.

"Tired yet?" he murmured, helping him lie back, and coaxing his fingers through Baze's hair. A helpless giggle bubbled up. "I _love_ your curls!"

Baze settled down on the cot, and then eased over to leave room for Chirrut—who was still exploring his hair without any restraint at all in a way that was—well, comforting. It certainly slowed Baze’s heart rate (or maybe that was the tea) and he felt like this was a right thing to engage in, a right place, right time, right moment.

“I guess that means I have to keep them,” Baze muttered, closing his eyes. He felt clean and warm and safe; but also tired. It wasn’t long before he slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! We hope you'll leave a comment and subscribe to the series, because there's more to come...!

**Author's Note:**

> [ **The Thief Who Became a Disciple**](http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/zenindex.html)
> 
>  
> 
> One evening as Shichiri Kojun was reciting sutras a thief with a sharp sword entered, demanding either his money or his life.
> 
> Shichiri told him: "Do not disturb me. You can find the money in that drawer." Then he resumed his recitation.
> 
> A little while afterwards he stopped and called: "Don't take it all. I need some to pay taxes with tomorrow."
> 
> The intruder gathered up most of the money and started to leave. "Thank a person when you receive a gift," Shichiri added. The man thanked him and made off.
> 
> A few days afterwards the fellow was caught and confessed, among others, the offense against Shichiri. When Shichiri was called as a witness he said: "This man is no thief, at least as far as I am concerned. I gave him the money and he thanked me for it."
> 
> After he had finished his prison term, the man went to Shichiri and became his disciple.


End file.
